From a "conversation" on Myspace:
B’s points are vivid and vaild and this is exactly why I picked this forum (among others) to pose this view. And I respect all the people he mentioned and their contributions. Consider this to be the seed of thought that the ones who really HAVE to learn will eventually get because there will be people on all sides speaking out to support it.
One at a time:
“how could such a height of intellectual growth fall abruptly below sea level?“
Because despite the fact that we are descended from tribal people who lived from the earth, that has all been obliterated from most of our consciousness, like its something that we should be ashamed of. We are embarrassed by the image of the sharecropper, but that was who taught us to get in the attic with the ax in the first place. At least when we were slaves, we could carry ourselves and the whites on our backs and survive regardless of pain and TRUE hardship. Now we wait for others to save us. We also wait for others to dictate how far we should be allowed to progess and anyone who gets past that “progressive” point and gains some power a la Condolezza, aint trying to come back and make it better for anyone. She is the most educated black woman in power right now, carrying out the orders of a war monger. She’s the Ava Braun to Bush’s Hitler…
“how could the east coast black intellectual movement be halted so decisively?“
Maybe because it was just fashionable to be part of the black intellectual movement, paying lip service. Our media models for black intelligence are Oprah, Bill Cosby, and Ozzie Davis (before he died). They have totally lost touch with what needs to be in the black community. And I’ve been to some of these black intellectual forums and all it is black folks using big words to justify and legitimize their educations. It has nothing to do with reform or informing those that need the information. It’s about class and them finally thinking they achieved what they thought would make them credible in the white world.
“how did the west coast become so anti-black and anti black progress?”
I guess it’s the smog.
“why did American blacks abandon their will to progress?”
Because “progress” is based on the “white man’s” view of success and power: Money, Cars, Women, mansions, yachts, owning people and having the power to subject them to shit if you profit from it…Our tribal culture, when we were brought here, was not about that. Yoruba and Ifa belief did not speak of those things. We learned to want those things because that’s what the people who controlled us had. You wanna know why we are up to our necks in that retarded bling culture? Because 20 years ago when Sean Combs and Missy, and Little Kim and the rest were kids they sat in front of the TV in the ghetto and watched shit like Dynasty and Dallas and Lifestyles of the Rich and famous and desperately wanted that. That was what raised them…and now its proliferating into our culture in such a destructive way that the same fucked up over the top problems that used to just be a sensational TV plot IS their actual reality. So real that some of them are doing real jail time…
“did the rise of the political "hispanic" (many who lot who are acutally black) help to water-down specific RACE-based movements in America?”
ENOUGH WITH DRAWING LINES BETWEEN US AND HISPANICS. We are the same people with the same needs. The only difference between blacks and Hispanic culture is that they have a defining language and culture that UNIFIES them. As much as Puerto Ricans and Dominicans swear they are different from each other, they are so not. And these are people who are not that far removed from living close to the land from whatever countries they came from to be here. So that if they are in the situation where they have to fend for themselves, they can. Please admit that many of there blacks we saw in NO waiting for help were the same blacks sitting around before then doing nothing and being supported by help from the government.
“Indeed, even people from India learned to get educated BEFORE coming west.”
OF COURSE! Look at the country they come from that has got us beat by like 6,000 years and how their people are STILL dying in the street from hunger. They come here educated because they have no other choice. I have massive amounts of respect for young Indian people educating themselves and getting those tech jobs because after 6,000 years they may be the force that brings India into another 1,000 years of growth. We should be looking at them and the Asians who work in the stores and restaurants here and educate their children to become our doctors and we should be taking serious notes…
“the African American celebrity culture completely sold out - and continue to sell out their own "race" merely to peddle their wares to the majority of Americans: the non- hispanic, non-Jewish white majority.”
No argument there and we could go on for days citing examples…
“anti- black sentiment is not a new phenomenon. research the success and failure of every black milieu over the last 200 years and you will notice a distinct pattern from step-in-fetch-it to Chicken George.”
Because once a “nigger” gets a taste of power, he will sell his own mama out to keep it.
“black self hatred is inevitable because blacks still exist in this culture at the behest of the white majority.”
That, in 2005, is no longer true and is a cop out. We have more Hispanics, Asians and Blacks combined than white people and maybe if we started waking up to this fact and building commerce and resources amongst those 3 groups…Black people hate themselves because they KNOW what they are doing is a cop out and it don’t sit right in the soul. If you are smoking blunts all day and fucking and stealing and wasting your time chasing money and not getting anywhere, the last person you are going to blame is yourself. I speak from experience: I am intelligent and I went through a self hating time when all I did was have no job and smoke a lot of trees and there was ALWAYS a crew to hang with everyday who did the same shit. And everybody had the same story: It’s hard to be black out here so let’s just smoke this L and commiserate and play video games and do nothing to alter the situation. Eventually, I began to hate my self-loathing and pulled it together. It helped that I had another world to escape to that pulled me out of it and gave me some incentive to move on.
“and black "progress" is subject to what extent the "white man's burden" can determine a threshold of bearable "pain". or how many cultural concessions can the white majority make/give? ..before they b(l)acklash...?”
How bout this: In 2005 EVERYONE is subject to pain. Once 9/11 and the tsunami and countless other natural things we can’t control (people included) happened, the white man’s burden is now all of ours. White dominant culture has been making bad choices for so long that even the goddamn hurricane itself was partly their fault because of the heating of the environment. Fuck concessions: they needed us to build this fucking country and they’ll need us to clean up all the shit hitting the fan…
“I will concede that your thread is far to progressive for this majority-white forum on "MYSPACE" (with all due respect to our white brethren) this is a well worn path of discussion in the back intelligentsia and whites ... “
I disagree: There are many intelligent people of color here and hopefully this discussion will bring them out. Fuck the black intelligentsia. We are PEOPLE. Let us finally be people talking to other people…
This is from one of my friends, a white guy named Guinea Bastard who said: “There is a clear division among race/class in our world, no matter how much the right tries to say things like "Well, there are poor white people, too". I agree, if you are a human being with a dick swinging between your legs, you should have the gumption to stand up and take responsibility, so called " be a man" , but i feel that there is alot of anger and confusion involved in being made to feel some sort of responsibility in a crisis when you have basically been taught that you are of a lower class in this world and you, your family, opinion, and class status really doesnt make a difference in this world. I just saw alot of people displaced, and they were mostly brown faces. Our government fucked this one up very badly, once again. I am also not trying to shoot you or anyone else a dose of that liberal, white guilt(the worst kind of racism)...you are correct, ultimately, you are either a caring human being or you are not. So confusing, these times we live in.”
“They just don't HAVE to study it. this is not to say that they are not capable of comprehending it. they just don't HAVE to. “
But they DO and we as blacks should be healthy enough in ourselves to be able to see it and hear it.
“New Orleans is first a horrible natural disaster. It is also an anachronistic state where old world America and its loathsome past still survives. The poverty and Post-Slavery-era mindset there is painful reminder that this culture is still .. so very young.”
..and yet we are one of the oldest cultures on earth and we still haven’t gotten it… It’s not a coincidence that cities like NO and in Thailand got washed away by the waters of the earth. They were some of the most debauched cities, built for just that purpose. In Yoruba belief, there is the triad of mother goddesses focused on water. Yemaya is the Great Mother of the sea, Oshun the River Mother and Oya, the Goddess of Storms, Rain and Lightning. Right now, with African culture all over the world, we are sick and polluted with our own evil and self-hatred. We are abandoning the spirit for the flesh, we kill our own children heartlessly and even fuck them if our desires can’t be controlled. We use drugs and liquor for hedonistic escapism, we curse each other if one prospers, and go as far as to steal what we did not earn. And now the mothers are cleaning house. Oya and Yemaya let their power be seen through Katrina. Oshun overflowed when her mothers did their work. And many of NO’s elders were the first to be taken back into Yemaya’s arms. The mothers see that, just like 200 years ago, if her children are to survive and grow, they must be taken from where they are and planted somewhere else. Birth is painful. The displaced people who now have to find other cities to start over are the same as their ancestors 150 years ago who wandered the roads of the south after slavery and the Civil War ended, searching for those who were lost to them for years and with no place to go back to...
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