Archive | March, 2009

The State of the Black Union and Other Uppity Negroness

7 Mar

stateofblackunion

First some housekeeping stuff:

I received two books to review and I’ve been quite remiss in doing so.  To the publicists of these books, if you’re reading this blog, I’ve not forgotten about you.  I’ve just been swamped with work–I am in grad school.

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Text derives from the Latin textus (a tissue), which is in turn derived from texere (to weave). It belongs to a field of associated linguistic values that includes weaving, that which is woven, spinning, and that which is spun, indeed even web and webbing. Textus entered European vernaculars through Old French, where it appears as texte and where it assumes its important relation with tissu (a tissue or fabric) andtisser (to weave). 

That’s essentially what one of my professors said on the first day of his Theology of Preaching class.  And hearing that struck a chord with me, so when me and one of my friends, who has begun to engage heavily his Universalist Unitarian proclivities gave me the UU approach to sacred writings that:

We do not, however, hold the Bible – or any other account of human experience – to be either an infallible guide or the exclusive source of truth. Much biblical material is mythical or legendary. Not that it should be discarded for that reason! Rather, it should be treasured for what it is. We believe that we should read the Bible as we read other books – with imagination and a critical eye. We also respect the sacred literature of other religions. Contemporary works of science, art, and social commentary are valued as well. We hold, in the words of an old liberal formulation, that “revelation is not sealed.” Unitarian Universalists aspire to truth as wide as the world – we look to find truth anywhere, universally.

Well, he didn’t say quite like this Wikipedia article did, but it was damn close.  And that too struck another chord with me.  It further reminded me why cultural criticism appeals to me so much.  Thankfully intellectual cultural criticism, particularly in the African American context doesn’t pull on the biblical scriptures but rather that of the human experience that has been woven together as a result of other human experience.

In fact, the human experience is a text itself!

Personally, this was one of the joys of being able to watch the State of the Black Union two weeks ago on that fabled fourth Saturday of February.  I take joy in hearing black intellectuals discuss and disseminate ideas about their particular experiences that have led them to their various conclusions about being black in America.  What I don’t get is all of these “itchy and scratchy Negroes” running around decrying that intellectuals with degrees who have done the damn thing is nothing more than people sipping on Tavis Smiley Kool-Aid ultimately hating on Barack Obama.

accountable-tavis-smiley-unabridged-compact-discs-simon-schuster-audio-books1I still have YET to figure out what’s wrong with holding each other accountable–just on a basic level as humans.  Many bloggers and blog comments have said that if John McCain or even Hillary Clinton had won the election that Tavis wouldn’t have published a book with Obama’s face on the cover and entitled it Accountable as he has with the last book.  The insinuation is that blacks don’t hold white elected officials accountable for their actions.  I’d raise the question as to what have blacks living in America been doing since we arrived on the shores of this country: from slavery until this moment in which I write this blog, African Americans have been holding whites accountable for their actions.  In fact, I’d make the claim the problem is that we’ve stopped holding each other accountable.

Other nations and races have their own problems and it’s easy to point them out.  In fact let’s continue to point out the injustices that have been experienced by blacks from white Americans, but at the same time, let’s hold each other accountable.  What I gathered from numerous blogs was that SOTBU came off as nothing more than a bunch of pompous intellectuals who have nothing better to do than complain rather than offering solutions to the problems.

One of the first problems I have with that assertion, if it’s in fact how many feel, is that we, African Americans, feel as though talking isn’t doing something.  Let’s remember nothing can get done unless we first talk about it.  Some say we’ve talked enough about it, we should start doing something.  I hear that, but there are enough local opportunities with which to become active in actually doing something.  I’d be very interested to know the personal life stories of those who left comments on blogs and those blogs that actually criticized SOTBU as to what do they do that places them so much higher than that of those panelists.

A second problem I have that I noticed with the black blogs that I read is the undaunted air of arrogance.  I know I come off that way too in MANY of my blogs, I can admit that, but let me clear it up right here and now: I don’t have all of the answers, nor do I think I have all of the answers.  Granted I have my grand moments of embracing my uppity Negritude,  but my blog is but ONE viewpoint shared out of many that attempts to move humanity forward toward ultimate reconciliation.  What I get from many blog comments, and some blogs themselves, is that “I’m the only enlightened one” mentality.

It’s not cute.

The problem with that mentality is that it closes one off to hearing other viewpoints and other possibilities.  It’s okay to disagree, but usually when people take stuff personal is when you realized that the air of “I’m the only enlightened one” has taken up residence.  Aside from the Jeremiah Wright issue, I really try my best not to get personal about hot button issues. I know I take out-the-box viewpoints on many popular culture views: Jeremiah Wright, SOTBU, Obama, church and society, anti-intellectualism and even these two latest posts about homosexuality on HBCU campuses and the idea of the Empire of the United States.  Those viewpoints are but one of many: my ultimate question is what can we do to reconcile the differences; what can we both give up in order to co-exist.

Usually people with this type of mindset would go into the event of watching the SOTBU expecting to find fault.  Well 9 times out of 10, if you go looking for something, you’ll find it.  

1. Criticisms such as “there wasn’t enough diversity on the panel” speaks to the fact that no one took up time to read about this 10th anniversary special: it was Tavis’ intent to get as many original panelists from the first year in 2000 to be on this panel.

2. Another was that why don’t Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West teach at HBCU’s.  Initially, I don’t see what that had to do with the quality of information they dropped during the SOTBU, but anywayzzzz…Cornel West had said before that to make that assumption is to automatically condemn the level of education and professors already teaching at HBCUs.  Don’t get me wrong, we got some NATIONAL FOOLS that teach at these HBCUs, but that’s just academic life in general.  Every school, black or white, private or public, JC or four-year institution has professors that are just dynamic.  Take my school for instance: Dr. Riggins Earl, Dr. Randall Bailey, Dr. Margaret Aymer, Dr. Wallace Hartsfield just to name a few–and then you got fools that participate in Fool Fest Circus Show all day everyday.

3. The ultimate one is the corporate sponsorship by Wells Fargo.  How can he spout all of this uppity Negro-speak and still take money from corporate giants?  That’s an easy one: from a combination of lack of personal responsibility ANNNNND from white power structures hell bent on keeping events like this silenced, blacks have failed to have entities that could have fully sponsored this event making it free and open to the public.

What about Oprah you say?  Hmmmm….she tried that long ago donating money to random people and remembered she didn’t want to be shat on again.  I don’t blame her.

soapboxAnd of course my soapbox issue is the rampant anti-intellectual spirit that pervades EVERY facet of this dumbnation of idiots.  My friend, same one who’s dabbling in UU, had often lamented that if we had lived about 50 years ago, most certainly around the turn of the 20th century, our peer group would have already published a book or ready to sit before our respective board of examiners to defend our doctoral theses.  Think about it, back in the day, Negroes were quite clear that education was the way out–and we had no problem with it.  I always used to say that this whole debate about being smart as synonymous with white was a myth, but apparently it’s something that has subconsciously seeped into out mindset as a people even those who have sucessfully graduated high school and college.

I mean what the hell kind of criticism is it that Michael Eric Dyson uses too many big words?!?!?!

PICK UP A DAMN DICTIONARY AND INCREASE YOUR OWN VOCABULARY!!!

It’s as if we’re allergic to knowledge.  My mother, my entire life used to say “If they [hahaha, who was they? LOL] wanted to hide it from black folks, they put it in a book.”  

WE DON’T READ!!!

We don’t even read blogs.  **rolls eyes**

We skim paragraphs and if its something we really like, then we read it.  Now, this isn’t a negative criticism of these various sites, but gossip blog sites get tons more traffic than sites like mine or other sites that require heavy reading.  No, this isn’t a ploy to guilt you into reading my blog–I’m just making an observation.  Moreover, another friend of mine has talked incessantly about video blogging on Youtube, commonly known as vlogging.  That’s fine, but it still is a dumbing down, in my humble opinion because we all know how much easier it is to watch the news rather than pick up a newspaper–well, they don’t have a lot of those anymore–or go onto your local town or city’s paper and actually read the articles.

To those that have read this post up until now and still think I’m off my rocker, let me see if I can drive it home this way:

Blacks en masse were telling the story of how Obama was Harvard educated and was the first African American over the Harvard Law Review board and how Lady Michelle Obama was Princeton educated and how these two black ivy leaguers had hooked up with one another.  We bashed the conservative media for making the assumptions that he was elitist because of his education.  No doubt we heard the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West at one time or the other make the claim that Obama did what white America had told blacks to do, and did it by the books and it still was considered a negative.  Ultimately, he got the education, but then he was too high.

It’s same criticism that I in turn pose to the critics of the SOTBU.  How can we worry about black kids equating white with being smart and how that’s not a positive, get mad when the conservative right criticizes Obama for his education–but then get mad at Dyson for using big words?!?!

By a show of hands how many people have read at least one book by any of the panelists that were on the SOTBU–and still felt that all they were doing amounted to nothing more than intellectual masturbation?

It seems as though as African Americans, we drink a different type of Kool Aid.  We love to jump on the bandwagon.  Don’t misunderstand me, it’s okay in many instances.  But, I think too often we fail to critically question why we did what did.  And we have the nerve to get insulted when someone calls us out on it.  We attach deep emotions to our beliefs and our convictions.  Far too often we fail to take a moment to pause and actually think about our decisions.  We go through a cursory decision-making process and then we make the choice.  As a result our Kool Aid comes out red.  We then look at the other person crazy when they come out with green colored Kool Aid.  

To work this analogy more, I’d be more interested in mixing all of the flavors together and get that nasty looking brown crap, but it tastes the best out of all of the Kool-Aid–then I want to ask the question, “Why are we drinking flavored sugar water?”  What’s the nutritional value of what we’re drinking?  Does it do nothing more than satisfy our thirst or our sweet tooth?

It becomes easy to bash Tavis.  But the majority of us didn’t really follow him up until last year.  He was just another random negro who got the axe from BET back in the day.  Let’s just be fair in the whole process.  Because ultimately what we’re doing is hatin’ on the haters.

What is the ultimate state of the black union?  I’m not sure exactly if one can pin it down, but if you anyone can find a way to do so, use small words.

If you have any commentary, rebuttals or any other nameless pieces of refutation for this article, just leave them in the comments section below.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Things I Learned from Chris Brown and Rihanna

6 Mar

rihanna_chris_brown_barbados

It’s my understanding that the whole thing started over a text message.

Back in the day this would have been the mysterious “little black book” or a random slip of paper that fell out of a pocket at an inopportune time with seven random digits with a dash between two of them–a phone number.   But, it’s my understanding that Robyn Rihanna Fenty, most commonly known by her middle name Rihanna, had discovered a text message from another lover woman and went off on her boyfriend Christopher Brown, who we’ll just call Chris Brown for short.

As in the case with former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the scandals that surrounded him, and the fall from grace of my beloved U.S. Senator Roland Burris, I prefer to keep my judgments to myself until charges have officially filed, so seeing as how Chris Brown was officially charged with two felony counts of assault likely to cause bodily injury and making criminal threats, I feel released to say my piece about this.

I’ve always wondered what should be the male response to something like this.  It’s always easy to say the man was wrong and he shouldn’t have hit the woman.  As a society, at least in black culture, we’re beginning to add on that it’s not okay for a woman to hit on the man as well.  But I do want to pose this question to my female readers: what in the female psyche prompts for a woman to become physical with a man, unprovoked?

Now this isn’t the case where Rihanna had gotten violent with Chris Brown, but rather she took the keys out of the ignition and sat on them, after he allegedly had just drove down the street punching her.  WHY WOULD SHE PROVOKE THIS CRAZY BOY ANY FURTHER?!?!?  I’m not at all making the jump that “she had it coming” but rather, why do we always absolve victims of 100% responsibility.  She had perfect agency to get the hell out of the car and immediately press charges.

So, when I said that to two friends of mine, one female and married and another male soon to be engaged (or so we all think, he’s been going out with the same girl for a good lil’ minute now) the male friend responded, “All she was thinking about was some other chick who was trying to get her man,” and male female friend said “YOU EXACTLY RIGHT!”

Now, let me be a male in this situation and tell you how I feel about this as a man:

1) Chris Brown should not have put his hands on her under any circumstances unless she was knocking the crap out him with a frying pan and his immediate life was in danger.  In such cases, as Dr. Phil said earlier this week on “The View” that he should then exercise his legs and leave because in this society, the law is NOT on the side of men.

2)Rihanna should have taken agency upon herself to get out of the situation as soon as possible and not have further provoked Chris Brown by sitting on his keys.  Women MUST regain power and put their own life in the front.

3)Women need not to provoke men.  That means don’t be telling your man by telling them they “aint good for nothing,” especially if they actually are getting up going to work everyday.  And most certainly don’t hit your man unprovoked.  The idea that “he can’t hit me because I’m a woman” is bullcrap.  It happens all day everyday and results in death at times.  

This is not telling women to be submissive to their husbands out of fear of being beaten.  I guess what I’m saying is use common sense.  Women should know when they’re brow beating or nagging their men to no end.

4)Men need not hit women to work out their own frustrations and issues.  Aside from those that have other issues going on, such as psychosis and what not, violence is often the expressed frustration of a situation.  Violence is at the end of a spectrum of dealing with problems and issues for many people once the reconciliation and communication process has terminated itself for whatever reason.  Wives and girlfriends who suffer silently for years from physical abuse from their respective lovers perhaps may be the men who suffer abuse from their bosses at work, or taking the movie Dolores Claiborne, just a man who was barely making it and had a pathology of issues that never got worked out.

Sometimes it’s nothing a woman can do to prevent herself from being beat.

But then, there are women who had watched their mothers’ being beat and have in turn gotten with men who beat on them as well.  Where for them, this was a part of the relationship process, and I daresay part of the love process.  Now, I read on another blog that one young black male commented why is it that we’ve created a culture where the “bad boy” image or as another of my friends said the “gangsta boo” image is lifted above that of the clean cut guy who’s steady and predictable–and doesn’t hit their woman.  Then we act incredulous and have the same damn conversation when this crap happened with Juanita Bynum and Bishop Thomas Weeks.

This isn’t a foreign topic to those of us in the black community, but yet and still the same scars are being opened for women who’ve suffered the beatings a raving male lunatics.

If I can park here for a moment…

I wonder if sometimes if the hurts we experience prevent us from making the best decisions in the long run?  Think about it, right after we’ve been hurt by someone, we really want revenge, most of us at least.  We want that person to experience what we experienced–the hurts, the fears, the anxieties, the pains, the sleepless nights etc. multiplied exponentially.  Often times, that does nothing to prevent it from happening to other people by other persons; all revenge does is carry out the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” mentality which ultimately renders society blind and unable to be nourished.

 Also, the hurt prevents us from accepting help.

Granted I’ve never been a woman beat by a man, so I’ll concede this argument if necessary, but I’ve been deeply scarred emotionally by various people throughout my life for various reasons.  But I know that right when the hurt comes to the surface, it’s easy to shut down and emote to others “You don’t know what I feel like, so saddown and shuddup” and I failed to enter dialogue with those who possibly could help me and give me a different perspective.

In case that was too veiled, all I’m saying to women is to not turn into penis haters, but to let men in on this dialogue without any stipulations.

My mother told me her mother told her that a man should only end up hitting you one time because after that you need to leave.

Leave your comments and feedback down below, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

Celebrating Obama As Head of Empire

2 Mar

obama_mail_500px

The ethical truth that’s so hard for us to face is that we have a black man presiding over a modern empire that we all live inside and benefit from.  The quiet question is what are we celebrating when we celebrate Obama as imperial leader?

A friend sent me that in a text message (don’tcha just love the 21st century, back in the day that would be sent in some sort of parchment letter) and it’s damning question for Americans, particularly Democrats–and even the African American community that gave overwhelming support–just what are we really celebrating?

Well, I think in a nutshell, we’re celebrating hope.

Obama, as most admitted, campaigned on this non-tangible idea of hope.  It was definitely pie-in-the-sky feelings that were invoked as a means of selling his hardcore tangible policies such as health care, drawing down defense spending and the greening of this country, and various tax policies.  And it worked, as Michael Eric Dyson said earlier in the first panel of the 2009 State of the Black Union “They called him Marxist, they called him a terrorist…but daggumit, they callin’ him President now!”

The issue at hand is that whomever was elected President of these United States would be inheriting that which is the American Empire.

Often times, we fail to employ empire-speak.  Empire-speak is the subtleties of jingoism that have crept into the ethos and culture of our everyday lives.  Empire-speak is saying that health care is a privilege and not a God-given human right.  Empire-speak is endorsing the Patriot Act because it keeps us safe from the terrorists.  Empire-speak allows for us to let George Bush and Dick Cheney go unchecked for the last three years and enter and illegal war that we just now received a plan on how to get out of Iraq.  Empire-speak allows for FoxNews to still be on the air; and creates the atmosphere for which people like Don Imus can still be rehired for the same type of job.  Empire-speak allows for the evangelical Christians and the religious right to be pro-life, but not campaign for legislation that maintains a healthy life, and would rather for citizens to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

This is what Obama is inheriting.

In fact the American people elected him, just as they elected George W. Bush in 2004.

So, in the spirit of the State of the Black Union on the last Saturday of Black History Month 2009, what are we really holding Barack Obama accountable for: is it maintaing our current way of life via Empire or are we really asking Obama to perform a change on society?  Let us remember change comes at a price; as the old foreboding phrase goes, “Freedom isn’t really free.”

I’m sure most conservative readers on this blog, yes, hello to you out there, would never connect the dots as I have and would call me a lunatic for doing so, but this is the world as I see it, and many others.  Much of our way of life experienced by ALL Americans those who came by voluntary and involuntary immigration over the years has been at the expense of others in this country and throughout the world.  Let us remember, the US is the same country, who under Bill Clinton sent U.S. Troops to remove and kidnap and democratically elected president in Haiti.  For whatever reason the US thought this was prudent, I have no idea and it doesn’t behoove the president of a small country like Haiti to lie on the U.S. gubbment, so, I’m betting this is real story.  Not to mention Mogadishu in Somalia with the whole Black Hawk Down crap that Clinton got us into as well.

The imperialism power seat that Obama has assumed is what’s allowing him to make the decision to keep 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq.

If that aint the oxymoron of the century.  How can troops be non-combat?

Regardless of Obama closing Gitmo (still haven’t figured out how the US occupies an island that we do ZERO trade with and they haven’t launched an attack against us–can someone say GrandHu$tle!!!), we still have bought into the empire mindset that the occupation of other lands will prevent us from being attacked by “those who hate America.”

Let me pause here because I’ve yet to here concrete evidence via the media that has linked the Bush administration to preventing another 9/11 type of terrorist attack.  I guess it’s the old 1984 mentality imposed by Big Brother that we have to “get them before we get us.”  Or even better yet the idea put forth in the movie Minority Report which proved the ultimate flaw of the human will; there’s nothing existing that proves that we will ultimately commit any said act.  Intentions are ultimately a figment of our will; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That being said, I hope President Obama finds it within his heart to run and anti-Empire administration, and to even do away with the ideal of being a benevolent dictator, but rather an individual who was elected by majority to manage the interests of the American people NOT at the expense and on the backs of those deemed unworthy by the Empire.

Your thoughts and comments are still more than welcomed below.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

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