Aaahhh!! Wtf!! I'm About To Break On Fools!!!

[enlightenment06]

HOL' UP!! HOL' UP!! I HAD TO GO TO MY SORORS FOR THIS. USUALLY I DON'T LET MY ANGER GET THE BEST OF ME BUT I GOTS TO LET IT LOOSE. I'M WATCHING C-SPAN2 RIGHT NOW AND SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL JUST MET WITH RUDY GUILLIANI TO DISCUSS ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE.

FIRST OF ALL, RUDY GUILLIANI IS THE LAST PERSON TO BE DISCUSSING SOME KIND OF ANTI-DISCRIMINATION AFTER HIS TERM IN OFFICE (AND I'M FROM NYC SO I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!!)

SECOND OF ALL HOW COLIN POWELL (WHO I THOUGHT WAS BLACK) GONNA START MEETING WITH PEEPS AND DISCUSSING ANTI-SEMITISM WHEN HOMIE DIDN'T EVEN GO TO THE WORLD CONFERENCE ON RACISM??!?!?!? WHAT KIND OF SH*T IS THAT? HOW THEY GONNA START TALKING ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM IS A PROBLEM IN EUROPE WHEN WE CAN'T EVEN FOLKS TO TALK ABOUT RACISM (AND I MEAN A SURRIOUS DISCUSSION) IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!?!?!? RIGHT HERE AT HOME!!!! WE CAN'T EVEN GET A FRIGGIN APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY WHICH WAS ON SOME OTHER LEVEL TYPE ISHT!! NOT TO MENTION THE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF GENOCIDE!!!



THAT AIN'T RIGHT MAN!! THAT AIN'T RIGHT!! COLIN, I WAS TRYING TO SUPPORT YOU MAN, I REALLY WAS. BUT NOW....

IF I'M OUT OF LINE YA'LL GON' HAVE TO FORGIVE ME. I DON'T LIKE GETTIN' GHETTO ON FOLKS BUT SHYYYYT THE HARLEM ABOUT TO COME OUT RIGHT ABOUT NOW

AIGHT YA'LL...I HAVE TO PRAY TO GOD FOR UNDERSTANDING

[nikki1920]

Honestly, BrotherGreek, tell us how you really feel..



Hate to say it but Colin Powell has become a politician, which means he will be hypocritical and often.

[AKA2D '91]

RELAX, RELATE, RELEASE!

[PrettyNPearls]

Unfortunately, Colin Powell is not a black man in office but a man in office. His color makes no difference when it comes to political issues unless he is trying to win votes from Blacks. I feel your pain and understand it. Also, White politicians are not concerned about African American's pain and suffering here in the United States. And if they are it's not genuine. There must be something in it for them for it to even be a discussion.

As for an apology for slavery and genocide don't hold your breath. As for reparations, don't hold your breath. To aplogize for something means you admit to wrong and most Whites don't feel like they have done anything wrong. And if they admit to wrong then they would HAVE to pay reparations and whites are NOT going to give their money away that easily. This is the life we are in.

AKA
Spr. 02. #1
TMO

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by PrettyNPearls
Unfortunately, Colin Powell is not a black man in office but a man in office. His color makes no difference when it comes to political issues unless he is trying to win votes from Blacks. I feel your pain and understand it. Also, White politicians are not concerned about African American's pain and suffering here in the United States. And if they are it's not genuine. There must be something in it for them for it to even be a discussion.

As for an apology for slavery and genocide don't hold your breath. As for reparations, don't hold your breath. To aplogize for something means you admit to wrong and most Whites don't feel like they have done anything wrong. And if they admit to wrong then they would HAVE to pay reparations and whites are NOT going to give their money away that easily. This is the life we are in.

AKA
Spr. 02. #1
TMO

And to add on, I just feel the era of "white guilt," if there ever was one, is long over. People don't give two s***s.
We don't have the moral pull we once held in the 1960s, IMO.

[PrettyNPearls]

Soror Steeltrap,

You are so right. Nobody really cares and it seems we have become so complacent with what "the man" has given us that we are not mad enough to stand up and fight. Noone is mad enough to stand up and/or boycott anything anymore. We have settled with our Lexuss and white pickett fences and that seems to be enough. Where are the Martin Luther King's and Malcolm X's of this generation?

Have we really become that complacent with the white man's toys that we just don't care anymore? The white man believes that if they just give us "good" jobs and let some of us own our own tv show like Oprah, and allow a black on the Supreme Court that we will shut up. And you know what? We did. They treat us like screaming babies and anytime we scream reparations "the man" gives us more candy to stop us from crying. And because we have been deprived of the basics for so long we take the candy not realizing that we have just made a pact with evil. Just my .08 worth.

AKA
Spr. 02, #1
TMO

[Sugar_N_Spice]

Originally posted by PrettyNPearls
You are so right. Nobody really cares and it seems we have become so complacent with what "the man" has given us that we are not mad enough to stand up and fight. Noone is mad enough to stand up and/or boycott anything anymore. We have settled with our Lexuss and white pickett fences and that seems to be enough. Where are the Martin Luther King's and Malcolm X's of this generation?

Have we really become that complacent with the white man's toys that we just don't care anymore? The white man believes that if they just give us "good" jobs and let some of us own our own tv show like Oprah, and allow a black on the Supreme Court that we will shut up. And you know what? We did. They treat us like screaming babies and anytime we scream reparations "the man" gives us more candy to stop us from crying. And because we have been deprived of the basics for so long we take the candy not realizing that we have just made a pact with evil.

So True, So True...

[DEvynSince84]

I totally agree with you Enlightened.... See that is one of America's problems. "Our goverment" always feels the need to STRAY over to someone else's country and tell them how to run thier $@#! (excuse my language), but I totally feel your frustration. This has been getting on my nerve, for the longest. For some reason "Our Goverment" has conjured up the notion that they are the Big brother Country, but what is so hypocritical is that, this only happens when it is convient for them. During the early part and most of the holocaust, America "looked the other way," when 6 million jews were eliminated off the face of the earth. Not to mention (like you said enlightened...) the hypocrasy they practice right here at home. They attempted to kill off "a people" for 300 hundred years, and it actually didn't stop there because they made it LEGAL to kill a "Nigger" after they supposedly freed the slaves. Them contradicting their selves, branches out to many different areas of the spectrum. These people have gotten so crazy as to tell someone they can't pray in public schools and that "the laws are the supreme laws of the land." Not to mention that they made it painfully clear that "The Church and the goverment are to be KEPT SEPERATE. " What is going on? What happen to the bible being the supreme law of the land? "In God We trust," is printed on our currency and we pledge alligence as" ONE" nation under "God," but yet we can't worship his name whenever and wherever we choose? and why the emphasis on "ONE NATION"? Is this why they think they can drop bombs on who ever they want? or take whatever they want from whomever?

I could go on and on, but I'm going to leave that one alone for now...

As far as Colin Powell, it was obvious he was an Uncle Tom years ago. Why would he be so close to Bush and his psychotic a$$, bomb dropping, war starting father? He is for self advancement, regaurdless if it is at the expense of his people. He didn't advance as far as he did, just being the best. He was the best alright, the best "good N****" they could find for the job, to keep everybody off thier backs. Uncle toms go back to the days of the hebrews, when king james translated the bible(which was originally written in hebrew) in to old english. It's nothing new.

As you can see I loved this topic. Please keep them coming, food for the brain...

[blackwatch06]

I, too, love this topic Frat, especially the passion in the responses. I think it is a lack of passion for "the cause" that many of our people are lacking that makes us complacent as well, along with a basic lack of understanding anything outside of the things we want. I think we also have to consider what the younger generation considers as our values. I think the main value of too many young black folks is what goes in my pocket, goes in my heart. When intergration took place, we also intergrated the capitalist values of the mainstream. Community became simply the neighborhood, and if we move to a different neighborhood, then we have changed the conditions in our community. Issues of poverty and racism became synonymous, so people began thinking that if I make more money, racism will die in my own life, thus ending racism in general. So the status symbols of bigger houses and expensive cars replaced the need for collective action.

How do we combat this? I think it has to start with assessing the meaning of life in our lives. In our Sunday school class, we will be discussing the meaning of life. Specifically looking at how the life and Ministry of Jesus brought meaning to the lives of people during his day, and how they still do today. What we mean by "meaning" is that Jesus taught some very revolutionary ideas about what it meant to be spiritual , powerful, and truthful. He challenged the norms and values of the religious establishment of his day and welcomed in a new value system that stressed relationship with God through true righteousness, which is grounded in love of God, self, and community.

With that being said, the core values of black folks today are vastly different fropm the core values of black folk in the 1940's and 1950's and need to be challenged with some revolutionary ideas. Someone said earlier that we have lost our moral authority in this country. This is very important fact, the moral authority issue was a bedrock in Dr. King's strategy to gain some social changes. He was able to present black people as decent, hard working, brothers and sisters in the Christian family from which so many people at the time claimed America's values were derived. So how America treated black people was indicative of a serious hypocracy in the moral conscience of society. To be true to the values which America claimed they had, they had to treat black people better. Today, I think society as a whole with black people in particular is becoming more secularized. What I mean by secularized is that what we base our moral decisions on is increasingly becomming what we want in our lives, not necessarily a higher moral law, but a self-centeredness that rejects any notion of objective moral law (and by proxi, objective truth). The seperation of church and state has been a very long debate in this country. In the past, this seperation has only been about making sure that the government did not support an offical state religion and force people into it, like the Anglican church and the Catholic Church in Europe. The validity of the values themselves were hardly ever challenged. But I think in recent years, there has been a push to question the validity of the religious values.

With the questioning of the religious values, comes the questioning of the meaning of life. What is freedom, liberty, and justice for all? Does it mean that I have the right to get the things that I want? I am truly free if I get things? That seems to be the driving force behind our lives. Accumulation of things defines our life's meaning. Those who have things are those who have meaning. In order to have meaning in your life, get things. Why change the system, why complain about American foreign policy, racial profiling, inadequate education and health care, etc. when all you have to do is get things, and these issues won't matter to you anymore. We no longer value character, wisdom, or even relationships now, so long as they hinder our ultimate goal of getting things. As long as our value is on getting things, there will be no revolution. As I was sharing with some frat recently, religion is not the opiate to revolution anymore, but now it's greed.
Blackwatch!!!!!!

[Steeltrap]

[i]Originally posted by DEvynSince84 (in part)/i]
I totally agree with you Enlightened.... See that is one of America's problems. "Our goverment" always feels the need to STRAY over to someone else's country and tell them how to run thier $@#! (excuse my language), but I totally feel your frustration. This has been getting on my nerve, for the longest. For some reason "Our Goverment" has conjured up the notion that they are the Big brother Country, but what is so hypocritical is that, this only happens when it is convient for them. During the early part and most of the holocaust, America "looked the other way," when 6 million jews were eliminated off the face of the earth. Not to mention (like you said enlightened...) the hypocrasy they practice right here at home. They attempted to kill off "a people" for 300 hundred years, and it actually didn't stop there because they made it LEGAL to kill a "Nigger" after they supposedly freed the slaves.

Is it really necessary for you to use the "N" word in this forum, which features many intelligent topics about AfAms? You could have made your point w/o it, IMO.

[Sistermadly]

Is it wrong for a black person to speak on social ills other than racism?

I mean - I've read a lot about Colin Powell, and from everything I've read, the brother knows who he is (if you catch my drift). Why does the fact that he chose to speak on anti-semitism in Europe mean that he's denying his cultural heritage?

Sugar_N_Spice said something that I really agreed with, but I looked at it in a different way. When she said:

The white man believes that if they just give us "good" jobs and let some of us own our own tv show like Oprah, and allow a black on the Supreme Court that we will shut up. And you know what? We did. They treat us like screaming babies and anytime we scream reparations "the man" gives us more candy to stop us from crying.

... I thought she hit a major nail on the head. We spend so much time focusing on what 'handouts' or 'hand-ups' that white politicians give us, that we don't realize that these very same handouts/hand-ups are what help keep us in a place of dependency. We don't realize that as long as we keep asking for these things, we as a people will FOREVER be seen as "needy" as "less than," as "unequal, not as intelligent, not able to compete on the same level."

But back to Colin Powell: I'm really bothered by the attitude that just because someone thinks differently or follows a different political path that he or she is no longer black. I'm of the mindset that "black" is anything done by a person of African descent - whether or not I agree with him or her. I mean - I've said elsewhere how I feel about Al Sharpton (and increasingly, Jesse Jackson), but I would never say that these people weren't black simply because I don't agree with them. Why do we do that to each other? Why do we feel a need to keep each other "on the hook" over certain issues, and if a person doesn't believe what you believe, we're so quick to try to strip them of their ethnic heritage?

(Many thanks to the ladies and moderators over here on AKA Avenue for letting me voice my opinion.)

(Edited to add)
I was thinking about the World Conference on Racism and Powell's trip to the conference on Anti-Semitism in Europe. True, Powell himself didn't go to the WCOR, but he did send a delegation. In reading some old newspaper coverage and some of Powell's own comments on the conference, it's clear (to me) why he made the choice he did. First, the WCOR started out as a noble idea, with lofty goals and aims. In no time, it devolved into a "let's all bash Israel" conference, with lots of attendants quick to equate Zionism with racism. Like it or not, Israel is one of our strongest international allies, and it wouldn't be politically expedient to put our name on a conference where there was the slightest chance that Israel would be bashed.

Second, Israel is a major powder keg - the whole region is. If political unrest continues to escalate in that region, the threat of nuclear retaliation isn't completely out of the question. As the chief diplomat in charge of foreign policy, it's his job to attend conferences like this. I don't think it speaks anything about his racial allegiances in that he chose not to attend the WCOR and went to this one instead. (I tried to find a copy of his appointments calendar from 2001, but couldn't).

[1savvydiva]

Originally posted by Steeltrap
Is it really necessary for you to use the "N" word in this forum, which features many intelligent topics about AfAms? You could have made your point w/o it, IMO.

Steeltrap, what did I tell ya'll about that cyber-schizophrenia? Bad habits die hard!

[DEvynSince84]

Originally posted by Steeltrap
Is it really necessary for you to use the "N" word in this forum...

When filled with passion, as I replyed to the topic, YES! I felt it was imperative to my argument and the point I was trying to make. I still do feel so. As you can see, when I proofread my reply I REplaced igger with *****. I apparently missed one of the only two I put in my reply, quite by accident. So I apologize, if I offended or disrespected anyone and I ask that those parties WHO WERE offended, forgive me for my carelessness. It wasn't intentional. I am very passionate about politics, goverment and just getting my point across as clearly as I can.

[lovelyivy84]

Agreed on all points. Thanks for saying it so eloquently.

Originally posted by Sistermadly
Is it wrong for a black person to speak on social ills other than racism?

I mean - I've read a lot about Colin Powell, and from everything I've read, the brother knows who he is (if you catch my drift). Why does the fact that he chose to speak on anti-semitism in Europe mean that he's denying his cultural heritage?

Sugar_N_Spice said something that I really agreed with, but I looked at it in a different way. When she said:



... I thought she hit a major nail on the head. We spend so much time focusing on what 'handouts' or 'hand-ups' that white politicians give us, that we don't realize that these very same handouts/hand-ups are what help keep us in a place of dependency. We don't realize that as long as we keep asking for these things, we as a people will FOREVER be seen as "needy" as "less than," as "unequal, not as intelligent, not able to compete on the same level."

But back to Colin Powell: I'm really bothered by the attitude that just because someone thinks differently or follows a different political path that he or she is no longer black. I'm of the mindset that "black" is anything done by a person of African descent - whether or not I agree with him or her. I mean - I've said elsewhere how I feel about Al Sharpton (and increasingly, Jesse Jackson), but I would never say that these people weren't black simply because I don't agree with them. Why do we do that to each other? Why do we feel a need to keep each other "on the hook" over certain issues, and if a person doesn't believe what you believe, we're so quick to try to strip them of their ethnic heritage?

(Many thanks to the ladies and moderators over here on AKA Avenue for letting me voice my opinion.)

(Edited to add)
I was thinking about the World Conference on Racism and Powell's trip to the conference on Anti-Semitism in Europe. True, Powell himself didn't go to the WCOR, but he did send a delegation. In reading some old newspaper coverage and some of Powell's own comments on the conference, it's clear (to me) why he made the choice he did. First, the WCOR started out as a noble idea, with lofty goals and aims. In no time, it devolved into a "let's all bash Israel" conference, with lots of attendants quick to equate Zionism with racism. Like it or not, Israel is one of our strongest international allies, and it wouldn't be politically expedient to put our name on a conference where there was the slightest chance that Israel would be bashed.

Second, Israel is a major powder keg - the whole region is. If political unrest continues to escalate in that region, the threat of nuclear retaliation isn't completely out of the question. As the chief diplomat in charge of foreign policy, it's his job to attend conferences like this. I don't think it speaks anything about his racial allegiances in that he chose not to attend the WCOR and went to this one instead. (I tried to find a copy of his appointments calendar from 2001, but couldn't).

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by DEvynSince84
When filled with passion, as I replyed to the topic, YES! I felt it was imperative to my argument and the point I was trying to make. I still do feel so. As you can see, when I proofread my reply I REplaced igger with *****. I apparently missed one of the only two I put in my reply, quite by accident. So I apologize, if I offended or disrespected anyone and I ask that those parties WHO WERE offended, forgive me for my carelessness. It wasn't intentional. I am very passionate about politics, goverment and just getting my point across as clearly as I can.

I understand your passion. But, still, the N word is ugly and we need to stop throwing it around. I'm not singling you out.