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Village Nation

The Village Bio

Movement of 6 or more points in any direction is considered significant,
API scores for African American students:
2001 = went up 12 points 2002 = went down 6 points
2003 = went up 53 points ( 1st year of The Village)
2004 = Went up 37 points (2nd year of The Village)
2005 = Cleveland High School receive the highest award in the state.

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From this post:

“People allow a lot of vagueness, as if what blackness is is understood; its not understood, if it ever was and it must be restated explicitly and repeatedly. Without stating what black is, positing where we should be going, folks can and do excommunicate black folks from the race, out of their own idiocy, for not meeting some phantom, half-baked ideas about race, rooted in insecurity/inferiority.” The FreeSlave

B.Medusa’s retort: “the problem w/ this [to me] is that this leads right back to “authentic blackness”, i.e. whatever falls outside the realm of what isn’t explicitly stated - what black is, where we should be going (& within that how we should be getting there) - isn’t “really” black. someone/some group still gets to define “what is black.” will they include anti-heirarchical structure, atheism, or calling out misogny practiced by woc; if those things aren’t in the place they are coming from? aren’t those of us who want to get rid of “the pie” in conflict w/ those who want a piece of it, or those who want a different flava pie?

regarding the vagueness, i think the problem is our human tendency to want things neatly boxed before we think about thinking outside the box (this would be me too).”

I say AMEN, to that! BIGTIME!!

Blackness is not a shoebox, it is all-encompassing; blackness incorporates and welcomes all who claim it. But some of us, in order to feel, safe, comfortable, strong, secure, demand less freedom and more restriction. All under the banner of “authenticity.” Erich Fromm talks about how many, “Escape From Freedom,” through rigidity of thought and action. They prefer slavery to a dictator (internal or external), rather than the responsibility of “positive freedom.”

Where we are as black people and whether, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we are prepared to grow and adapt or stay stuck in outdated modes of thought and behavior - are questions in need of answers.

I was reading this book on jazz today, “Blue: The Murder of Jazz”:

“Miles Davis would often talk about taking a musician who was comfortable playing in a certain context and putting him in a very different musical situation in which he was pushed to eschew his easy licks and cliches and discover fresh ideas from parts of his mind and soul previously unexplored…”

We beat each other up with these easy licks, these cliches” that were spoonfed us by the oppressor. Accidentally. We become the apprentice-oppressor. We don’t even know we’re doing it, we’re so programed in hierarchy and the art of the putdown. We’re divided and then try to conquer each other with our super-militance, super black foolishness.

The beauty and strength of blackness, to me, (and I have to credit B. Medusa for reminding me of this) is our great variety, our numerous, creative/non-creative, funky, ordinary ways of being. Blackness is, to quote George Clinton, “

So wide can’t get around it
So low you can’t get under it
So high you can’t get over it
HIGH you can’t get over IT

One of the interesting currents in jazz history is that one generation’s revolutionaries, often become the next generation’s conservatives. Louis Armstrong was a revolutionary figure in jazz in the 20’s and 30’s, yet, he despised the next movement - bebop - that he created.

When we talk in cliches, we are likely thinking in cliches. If our heads are mired in the cliched past, how can those thoughts lead us to an evolved future?

When we can accept ourselves and each other as the imperfectly black people that we are - we will have grown into a mature people. But we’re a LONG way from there. When we can see the ways in which we hurt each other and own those lashings and those hurts…ditto. When we can disagree with each other without excommunicating each other from the race…then we will have come nearer to what we once were…great.

Bird Lives

I just read some shit that I wrote.  But I didn’t write it.  But damn if this dude didn’t say some shit that I feel COMPLETELY!!

What is black?

How do color and race con- and diverge?

What does it mean to be “pro-black?”

Who decides who is authentically black? And who is not?

Who benefits from the judgemental, hyper-critical, ex-communicative obsessed pathology within our community?

What does black unity look like?

Where are blacks/African Americans going as a people?

As so-called Americans? Are we truly Americans and do we want to be?

What is our philosophy and can we go anywhere, as a collective, without a clarion clear philosophy?

Should we seek a greater economic share, a higher socio-political profile in a satanic, evil empire?

Should we be building something completely separate from this culture - either here or abroad?

Should we secede from the Union?

What about our 40 acres and a mule?

Reparations? How do we get what we deserve, what our ancestors are owed?

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What should our relationship be to the Native American? Should we continue to ignore their plight and our connection with them?

What about the Latino/Latina? Immigration? Should we pit ourselve as adversaries? Or should we recognize our common enemy?

Who is our enemy? How are we our own worst enemy?

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These and other questions need to be asked and answered. One day anyway. Why? Because, if your actions are predicated on a vision for the future, a vision for whoever you claim your people are, you’re not going very far.

I believe our future depends on uniting with people of color. I don’t believe that whites can be our allies under any circumstances, though, I’m not opposed to any John Brown white folks who sprout up. I’m down with brown, black, red, yellow, beige - if they are awake. They must be awake and it is essential that they look inward as well as outward simultaneously.

Erich Fromm:

“..freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an ‘individual,’ but that at the same time he has become isolated, powerless and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage. Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual’s potentialities, together with his ability to live actively and spontaneously.”

What is your bondage?  What shackles do you strap-on to limit your freedom?

Free: Brotha, y’all are getting off track. Put the choo choo back on the rails. Pretty please…

While the comments between you and MF are almost as interesting as they are disgusting, the time you guys take to flame each other is wasted. Why not take that time to disassemble something that’s worth being attacked. I bid you, my brotha, to please back down. It just ain’t worth it.

There are a few blogs that I spin through every evening to see what’s happening in the Afrosphere. Skeptical Brotha, Field Negro, Afrospear Think Tank, Faithin Action On Line, Free Slave, and The Thinking Black Man

I hit these sites, mainly because I love the public discourse. I love the thoughtful exchange that flows from those blogs.

But as of late, I’ve been turned completely off when I hit up a blog, only to see bickering and slap downs. I hit up the Afrospear and what did I see there? Hmmm…. I don’t quite know what was going on there. Well, that’s not true. I do know what was going on there. I’ll save it for an off line (personal e-mail) conversation if you choose to have one with me.

I hit up BronzeTrinity’s site… And what did I see there? Her hurt feelings all over my computer screen. Although I think she needs to not take all of this so seriously, my heart went out to her. I know what it’s like to be young, motivated, and on fire for a mission. (I’m still young. But I’m somewhat of a skeptic. Maybe that’s why I pretty much live at Skep’s site.)

Do I think you owe Bronze and apology. At this point, I don’t think so. But if it will help you guys mend fences, I think we have got to do something to move along. The sister deserves to feel like she is wanted and love by her own. Whether you work with her or not, let’s love each other. (Trust me, I’m not trying to get you to work with Bronze. If I was, I would be a hipocrit. Because I ain’t trying to join nothing right now. Too busy.)

I hit up Field’s site tonight. And he was going off about crabs in a barrel. Who was he talking about? The word fight that’s going on over here, and other blog squabbles that’s popping up on the net.

And then I get here, only to find a verbal bitch slap fest going down. Thanks for the ringside seats. But no thanks… I hate to see two grown a** men fighting.

For the record, I think I agree with you on most things. However, I can’t get with you taking time to box this brotha on your blog. Of course, this is your spot, and I probably don’t have a right to tell you how to decorate it. But I still feel like I got to speak up. Excuse me for pointing out the stain on your carpet. I dare not suggest you cover the spot up. Just clean it up…

I’m sorry for the long post.

Brotha, I wish you the best. Max/Free, you are one of the most intelligent brothas I’ve had any type of contact with, in person or vertually via the internet. Don’t allow your intelligence to be misused by engaging in oral wars about basic bullsh*t. It’s not worth it. It all seems just ridiculous.

Written with love and peace on my mind…

Angie

Umm, I can’t dodge this.  Guilty as charged.

Sorry folks for losing my way.
Bronze Trinity,

I apologize for hurting your feelings.

Thank You for all of the work that you’ve done.

They don’t wear gloves and they don’t use silencers. Oh, Hellll Noooooo!

Noisy, gloveless verbal homicide is their staple, impressing on witnesses that disagreement garners maximum retaliation. They want to leave their fingerprints the better that you know they said it and they meant it. And, oh by the way, “look for me, you can find me on the Internet, cuz I don’t hide behind no avatar!! King Kong ain’t got shit on ME!!!”

But what did they say?

The Head MF in charge, Cknucklebean and his crew of unhired gigolos cavort around the ‘Net, playing United Slaves to black folks Panthers, or worse. “Bang, bang - you’re dead, muthafucka!! Now, shut the fuck up and wear my black laquered shackles.”

And there they go again, heading for the tower, playing Charles Whitman, playing Lee Harvey Oswald, except like Lee, they aren’t carrying weapons and in fact, they are chess pieces in a larger game they only think they understand. Patsies in another man’s game.

The NB Mafia worry about small details like reality, or the truth? Sheet! Not when there’s another body they can push the steel into. Fortunately, its only a plastic shank, a slim shady trifle.

Really, are black people so “different” that we can’t put down our egos for a commercial break and actually see what part we play in stoking the fire between us? Heal the wounds between us?

NAW

I can’t work with you, NB Mafia. Don’t want to, don’t want to talk with you, cuz our love is on a one-way street - which don’t make it love at all. Much as I love Trane, I don’t want to hear no thirty minute solo. I wanna hear McCoy get some, hear, Elvin burnin’ yams in the skillet. These weak ass Filibustas don’t have no draw for me.

I’m putting on my vest for you, NB. You stalk me and my folks harder than the white man. What’s wrong with that picture, Tataglia?!

I got some parmesan for your ass!!

(Hat tip to Lady Christiann Anderson, Negropologist and creator of the term ‘Black Mafia’)

I was talking to my sister LA last night and we were riffing on this whole “racism-white supremacy” thing. Speaking with her is often like trading fours in jazz; its often this rapid fire creative exchange where ideas get played that lead to other “in-the-moment” creative blurts in the other person.

Its like, I will read some shit, absorb it, but be nowhere near close to assimilating it…And then, I’ll have a clarifying conversation with her - meaning that ideas from the different sources that I’ve read will get exercised, worked through in the exchange…Sometimes it only creates an awareness that I’m more confused than I thought; but just as often, the conversation creates a new spark, sheds light and resolves something.

As I’ve been pondering this racism (does it exist, what it is really, etc), reading Marimba Ani’s Yurugu has resolved one thing in my mind: that there is a unity of Isms, that they are really only tools of European male global domination.

For example, I am participating in a forum on the intersection of racism and homophobia in the black community. Well, who does black homophobia serve? Does it serve the black community? Or does it fracture us even more? First we were house and field, then octoroons, quadroons; good hair/bad, to the point of paperbag tests and comb tests. I mean, when you can degrade a people to the level that they will actually perpetrate this kind of insanity on each other…you’ve got an amazing system of control.

Willie Lynch Lives!!

Hating or feeling contempt for my gay brother seems the height of idiocy today, however, it wasn’t that long ago that when a gay man looked at me, my automatic response was to sneer at him and let him know “I’m not like that.” Now as I age, I’m pissed, wondering why gay men aren’t looking at me?!

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There’s a lot of talk about action around the AfroSpear these days but few are asking about the destination. Where are we going? Are we going to continue seeking to integrate into a burning house? Beg for crumbs from the white man’s table? Vote for candidates beholden to white capital, controlled, contained? Where do we want to go as a people?

People seem not to want to ask these kinds of questions, let alone consider them, chew on them, grapple with them. More often than not, people fail to reflect, in their hurry to be seen doing. “Being Seen Doing” is an ego inflating imperative that can destroy, destroy the integrity of human beings…and they may not even know it. Our egos have to take a back seat to the task. We have to be whole. This is a major part of our inner work. WE are not whole. Our sojourn here has damaged us.

I look at the work of Michael Fisher. He implies that he is a real black man, while others are pretenders, have to go through a rite of passage to prove their blackness. To him. He has the inside track to black folks, knows what we should and shouldn’t do. AND, he has made it his life’s work to besmirch the work that some of us trying to do with the AfroSpear.

This reinforces my suspicion of those who represent themselves as “Race Warriors,” or, “the Black Intelligentsia,” who never talk about the concomitant work that THEY are doing on themselves, that qualifies them to stand in judgement and deflect anything that comes there way, who when criticized, NEVER acknowledge the possibility of fault, mistakes, human error.

I don’t trust folks who are martyrs, who know every gotdamn thing, yet ain’t engaged in a process of growth development, don’t evidence any teachability.

WE need THERAPY!!!!!!!