Quote:
Originally posted by DoggyStyle82
Liberated Queen:
You can cry and scream about 400 years and it won't change a thing. Free your mind. Books are for learning and life is for living. I know who I am and I know about the effects of slavery and Jim Crow. That is a crutch that we can't afford to lean on and make excuses off of anymore. In the words of my favorite line from my favorite movie Glory when Morgan Freeman was speaking to Denzel "It time that we ante up and kick in like men dammit, like men!!!. Being a member of the MANHOOD frat has definitely taught me to be the Master of My Fate and the Captain of My Soul, white man be damned. You are intimating that we are too stupid to break that cycle. As for that GNP thing, check out the website for Jesse Jackson's Wall Street Project
|
That's funny, this whole conversation started with someone providing information from a Black Think Tank, and some very well researched books, and you indicated that to listen to books written by "neo-academic" somthing or other Black people was foolish. Who has time to cry and scream? I'm so busy putting action to my words and beliefs that crying and screaming will have to be saved for another generation.
I agree with you completely. At this point we must take responsibility for our community. Can we truly expect to look to white society, the very society that enslaved us, to help us find our freedom? Absolutely not.
But can we chart our course if we don't know the direction from which we came? Well anyone who has studied travel, or taken a hiking trip or anything like that will tell you that is a foolish thing to do. You must orient yourself and get a true picture, or idea of what direction you came from. That is the basic principle of Sankofa. The sankofa principle is taken from the Akan culture of Ghana. The symbol is of a bird w/ an egg on its back, flying or walking in one direction while looking back in the direction from which it came. The point is that the bird is constantly looking to its past, the essence from which it came (essence is represented by the egg) in order to chart its path to the future.
I work in social services and am en route to get my law degree. I am fully aware of the fact that the one thing that serves to unify social workers and others who work in the services that deal directly w/ our people, is that the methods we have available to us now are NOT WORKING. THey are only designed to cure the symptom, but not address the disease.
You can pass out a million condoms to inner city kids, and that may help the symptom of sexual transmitted diseases. But that won't aid in curing the disease, which comes from a slave culture that has never been addressed. So the kids may use condoms a few times, but since their culture is one that tells boys "you are good for breeding and not much else", then the longterm picture is very dim. You can fund a million post-jail rehab programs, but if we don't stop to ask why Black people fill up the prisons in the first place, then we're handicapping ourselves. Shoot, if the international community can ask these questions (and many more) about the horrific state of the Black community in this country, why is it soo difficult to get Black folks here to ask the same questions? I really hate the fact that so many other cultures and people all around the globe are so aware of the problems we face and the fact that we are in a really f*&ked up situation, and are truly FIGHTING FOR US, and Black folks who "make it" are often times so busy "making it" that we would rather continue to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the pain our of our children than to risk our good jobs to do something that will really help the situation. Donating money is good. Being a big brother or sister is great. But you can't just use band-aids for someone who is dying of a heart attack. We must do something more.
I don't know if you've ever heard of generational curses, but the slave culture and mentality is definitely one of them. Put it to you like this, if white communitites were suffering from what black communities are dying from, then everything in our curriculums, churches and government, would be centered around discussions and cures for the problem. But black people have been oppressed for sooo long that to us, and those around us, it is the norm. If God is real, then we do not have to live like this.
It's soo normal for us to be terrorized that we don't even pray about the condition of Black people in the church. We're so busy waiting on Jesus to come back, so that we'll be free by and by, that we fail to realize the power of God has been given to us! If we're supposed to be full of the power of God, then what is the problem? It's sooo normal for the churches to be full of women and 3 old men, that we don't even recognize that there is a problem. If God is real, then we do not have to live like this. It's sooo common to see brothers (of EVERY ECONOMIC STATUS) being harrassed by cops, we don't even do anything until 15 black kids have been killed. If God is real, then we do not have to live like this.
If you truly believe you are free, and that slavery is not an issue for you, then I would hope you are doing more than just holding on to your "freedom papers". I would hope we all are actually. If we continue to not view our past as intimately related to our ability to succeed, then our very HUMANITY is at risk . Whether you want to believe the numbers or not, don't you think there is a reason as to why nearly every, EVERY black community, from Maine to Utah looks like a war zone? Why nearly all of our communities from ALASKA (where Blacks make up less than 4% of the population but over 40% of the prison population) to Ann Arbor are full of death, depression, and negative energy? If God is real then WE DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS.
I'm glad that you have been able to find such a good organization to help you define yourself. Unfortunately since Black men and women make up less than 5% nationwide of college students (not even counting those who actually graduate, and the numbers are so low they are scary), chances are that not many other Black men (relative to the eligible population) will have that same opportunity. In fact in cities like New York, and in states like Illinois, for every SINGLE black person who gets any form of a degree (that includes bachelors, masters, ph.d, j.d, etc. anything beyond high school) there are at LEAST 2 Black people going to jail? WE CANNOT BEAT ODDS LIKE THAT WITH METHODS LIKE THE ONES WE ARE USING.
Carter G. Woodson, who I believe is one of your frat brothers, wrote The Miseducation of The Negro. In that book he deals with a lot of the issues we've talked about here. In fact, the book is almost scary because he describes our current situation to a T, but the book was written in the thirties. But obviously, we still haven't learned, because 70 years later we are worse off now than we were then.
I'm glad you have your freedom papers. But thank God, Moses and Harriet went back into slavery (their "past") to bring others to freedom also. We're not too stupid to break the cycle. We created the pyramids, and the first civilizations. Stupidity is not in our genetic make up.