Afrikan House on Fire

There's the e-mail advising veteran's not to support Target, because Target doesn't support veterans. There's the e-mail advising Blacks to call Rush Limbaugh to the floor, because Rush insulted Obama and Halle Berry, and he just might be a racist.

There are more e-mails, too many to mention in such tight confines, but they all serve the same purpose: a distraction from what Black people really need to be concerning themselves with.

In response to the first e-mail, I sent the following reply to the sender:

I'm just thinking about how many other corporations we should not be doing business with. What also comes to mind is how many smaller businesses we shouldn't be supporting either. And I'm not thinking of this from a veteran's perspective, of which I'm considered to be, but from a Black perspective. Let's handle home before we attempt to handle Target. Start small, spread the love.

You see, that's one of the major problems facing Blacks. We spread ourselves too thin, trying to put out everybody else's fires, while ignoring the 3-alarm blaze burning on the home front. Do we do this as an escape from our real reality, or are we just so blinded by the manipulative forces at work that we run scatterbrained from one "emergency" to the next?

For all the "conscious" folks nodding in agreement, don't nod too hard, because you're just as guilty as those who "don't know better." At every Afrikan-centered event, so-called conscious folk show up for a feelgood ceremony, in which lectures, panels, debates, discussions and fish dinners have replaced Sunday morning service.

There, they complain about the non-progress of Blacks as a whole. They reflect on Afrikan history, share the glorious history of Afrika and put out a call for everyone in attendance to come together in honor of Afrikan history--unify or die! What's usually left out of these highly intellectualized and charged festivities is a critical analysis of Afrikan history, most significantly concerning where we, as Afrikans, went wrong and how we can now do it right.

Outside of those conscious audience members are the speakers, sometimes consciously and unconsciously vying for the most quotable quote. Each saying a whole lot, yet saying nothing. At least, not anything most "conscious" folks who follow the lecture circuit haven't heard before.

Every now and then, a lecturer with an understanding of the gravity of what lies ahead steps to the podium and proves the theory that even a large majority of conscious folks don't want things to change, because if they did, when this brother and sister puts out a call to pool resources, time, etc., these individuals would heed the call. Instead, they disappear into the backdrop until the next event.

Mind you, this is not found in all Afri-centered events, but quite a few that I have personally attended. And it seems I'm not the only one who has recognized our new dog-and-pony show, as other Afrikans have presented with the same dilemma. They want to believe in their people, that their people want to build and grow, but some of our people make it damn hard, especially when someone calls for solution-based action and nary a hand raises but theirs and the person who called for a solution.

What many of them don't do is what they don't do at home: take a critical look at what has worked and what hasn't. In the end, the lectures, panels, debates, discussions and fish dinners end the same way they began--with nothing accomplished.

These same people, if we were to follow them home, would be found to be living a life of total chaos, their homes reflective of their minds.

That is why I propose that Afrikans go back home. And by go back home, I mean to the walls they retire to each day. The place where the closest family they can have are to be found. Not only go home, but spend time with these members, develop bonds, increase the love and sharing, clean house--mentally and physically.

In other words, work on home first. Once you've mastered home to the best of your ability and have something concrete to offer, with a vision and action attached, gather your home-front family together and, together, go out and spread the love. That is how a community comes together. That is how true unity comes into being. But it won't happen until we go back home.

Save the Children, Save Ourselves

Helplessness, accompanied by a strong dose of rage, is the general feeling I get when I look back on the history of Blacks since our initial encounters with caucasoids. I feel helpless, not because I fear them, which I don't, but because it seems my people do not see them as the greatest instigators of Black pain and suffering.

I feel this way because if I were present when Malcolm was gunned down, when Fred Hampton was gunned down, when Assata Shakur and Mutulu and Mumia were set up, I would have expected my people, Black people, to have been there to protect them from infiltrators, corrupt caucasoids and Black impostor sell-outs.

But that isn't the general theme for Blacks living in Amerikka. We're too busy consuming ourselves with the menial tasks created by caucasoids to redirect our energies that we feel no need to protect our legacy, let alone these fighters of our freedoms.

How did it all get so twisted, and when did it occur? A theory of mine is that it began to occur when we removed the restrictions and expectations from our children. When we spoiled our children, until only a shadow of the decayed remains were left. The end of an empire begins the same way the beginning of an empire occurs: through the children.

When we give up our responsibilities and accountabilities for our children to strangers, we all suffer. We all lose. And we've been losing a long time. By the time a great number of our children exit the womb, they're already ruined by parents who carry with them the general philosophy that we have no power to change things, or worse yet, that nothing needs to change because we only look at the sum of the parts and not the whole.

Any community that operates in parts cannot function as a solid unit. And the longer it remains so, the more fragmented the community becomes and the harder it is to put "Humpty" back together again.

Considering the minds of current-day Afrikans living in Amerikka, it's not difficult to believe that at the end of the "first cycle" of slavery in Amerikka when they were told they were free there were some who refused to leave their masters for fear there'd be nobody to feed, clothe, rape, lynch and provide them with dirt-floor houses. And that just scratches the surface of how traumatic were their experiences. The idea that they would rather stay in brutality's lair than to venture out on their own.

I've made it up in my mind that if we save the children, we save ourselves. Through the rejuvenation of our children, we build a nation, one with staying power. Not the shaky, questionable, scary perceived power we have lulled ourselves into a false sense of complacency over, but real, tangible power that we can see, touch and feel.

I remember well the words of Brother Amos Wilson, when he said, "You can talk about Egypt, you can talk about Afrika, but if you're not including a talk about power, you're not talking about anything." He knew that as long as we remained powerless, others were free to wield power over us at will.

It's surprising that some of us will speak of the atrocities faced by our brothers and sisters in Afrika, but do not see the atrocities faced here in Amerikka. How can you be free, when another man, who does not have your best interests at heart, dictates when you wake up, when you go to the "plantation," and who "raises" your children?

And because we have been indoctrinated into believing that the only success is the kind that purchases big, empty houses, fancy cars and clothes, etc., we "work" ourselves to death, sacrificing our children in the process.

And, sadly, we have those, who while their hearts might be in the right place, decide they want to save Afrika. Fix Afrika, when they haven't fixed themselves and where they are. I tell them that the worse thing they can do for Afrika is to bring their Westernized thinking to Afrika's soil.

Until we have purged our minds and spirits of the hell that has beseeched us here, there is very little we can do for Afrika. Afrika doesn't need another european, even if it comes cloaked in a melaninated body.

~evolve~