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Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 - 10:25 pm: | 
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...I have no sympathy for a White male in America who is unable to support his family, hold a job or realize his version of the “American Dream”.
Actually that is not completely true but I wonder what kind of total failure that white male must feel like -- without the luxury of having racism as an excuse.
I wish Black people were so lucky. |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 01:52 am: |
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Hmmmmmm? I have no sympathy. Yet, white people as are black people are victims of the economy. If a company moves because they can find cheaper labor, that is not the fault of the man, but of the mobility and irreponsibility of capitalism.
As i said black people are victimized by racial and class oppression. There is a huge difference in opportunties and life chances between a several generational college graduates, such as in Benilde Little's Good Hair and the first generation black prep-school student.
Yet,that working class white man that lost his job, will not be followed in the department store. The middle class black would, even lose his life or be imprisoned for being articulate or "uppity." |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 02:22 am: |
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Can we rule out the element of luck? How else to explain the Oprah Winfrey phemenonmen? The only extraordinary think about her is that she is now a black billionaire. |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 08:54 am: |
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Cynique: "Lucky" refered to a white person not having racism as an excuse for failure. I guess you would call that bad luck.
I was being sacastic when I described using racism as an excuse as a "luxury". I wish Black folks did not have this "Luxury" as an excuse. I'm suggesting if we did not we would concentrate more on what has really hendered our success.
Having said that, almost any successful person will readily admit a portion of their success is attributable to luck, being in the right place in the right time, meeting the right person, etc. Oprah is "lucky" she she was not born 200 years ago. She would probably be dead at this stage in her life; having picked cottom most of what would have been a miserable life. All of her talents would have had no value and perhaps would have been held against her.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 12:30 pm: |
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Troy,
I'm feelin ya. And, actually, there are so many variables in the human condition that all we can do is engage in "tongue-in-cheek speculation". |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 01:29 pm: |
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Troy:
In 2003...there is no reason for ANY black person not to at least have a decent apartment and a running car with $150 dunce money in the bank by age 21. This place is like a dreamscape!! There is no good place on earth to live...but America remains by far the BEST.
I was shocked when I came here (to the ghetto section of D.C.--Anacostia Park). SEWAGE SYSTEMS!! To me, it was like a Paradise!! I never comprehended what "ghetto" meant. The Black community there, to me, were the most talented, artistic, goodhearted and unique tribe I had ever seen in my life--ofcourse, they did not see themselves that way. They had a "mental block" (one that on research is hundreds of years old and passed down). Dinkas and Nubians in Sudan are like that, too. I'm lucky my father was Egyptian and a little arrogant, you see.
Without self confidence, some form of hunger and some level of sheer willpower....the White Poor man you mentioned, the blacks, NO ONE (regardless of race or class) can exceed to the level of success. CLASS and Wealth, however, can buy a total loser a gold plated seat in a comfy room. Just like being White can help a fat woman cop a black man whereas she wouldn't have gotten him had she been fat AND black. White skin brings a watershed of privileage..but still...if a Black person "concentrates" on their goal...they can eventually supercede their color and background.
Look at me, Troy. I couldn't speak good English until I was 16 (came here at 8). I have NEVER worked a 9 to 5 job in my life. My dream was to be a housewife..but I realized that in America, this was not a "smart" dream for a Black girl. Men have different values here. True, being a foreign woman...I relied on the "men as a ladder system"--that's the Biblical way, unfortunately. I did not have class or wealth, but I aligned myself with men who did and I INSISTED that those men help me to get what I want. You'll be shocked to know what a person can get just by going up to the gate and demanding it. I have no formal education whatsoever, because although I would have been an ideal college student, I was too troubled to concentrate on school and my AA family had 8 kids! True enough, I went back to N. Africa for a few years--but even being "American" saved my life over there (because being American outweighs being Black in Europe and Arab societies). AND look at me today....I live in Calif. in a huge house where I pay no bills, I have nice cars, I have credit cards, I am a professional cook, I have gotten international press coverage for my career--coverage that other writers tell me they would Kill for and never get. I am a #1 topic in the board rooms of Simon and Shuster and Random House--they discuss me in the same breath as Colson Whitehead and Maya Angelou. A Black brilliant but determined uneducated woman who basically got by on...willpower and "strategy" alone.
I planned my success, trust me. It is not by LUCK or accident. I realized that I would have to be an original and start trouble.
Blacks get mad at me--because of the names that I call Whites to their faces. They think it's childish. But if you're someone's equal...why shouldn't you say what you have to say right to their faces?
There is no other place on earth where I could do all this...just because I WANTED TO. The key for blacks is to know one thing that I definitely know...that I am "Black"...and could therefore not get drunk at parties (as the men did). I could not afford, in my position, to get on drugs or to get wrapped up in men's deceptions about "Love" (real love can only come for a woman after she has her own power, her own OUT clause). When a baby came too early--I aborted it. I knew that I had to someday present to MY PEOPLE what things I know about and could speak truthfully on. I would have to use my talent to fight their fight...but I could not do that if I allowed the society to destroy me first. Many blacks make the mistake that they have the same privileages as "White kids"--who can atleast wake WHITE the next morning. Also, Troy. Lauryn Hill said a smart thing. She said, "ALways let them think that you're a little bit crazy". This is true.
We, as Blacks, have no excuse to not make it in this society. I have been saying it for the longest, but no one listens:
"it isn't government programs or money loans" that Black people need. What we need is to begin mentally and emotionally equipping our children with self-love, self-confidence and RESPONSIBILITY for one another (it takes a village, you see). We should also preach the importance of Racial Networking...the White race does indeed have a SHARED WHITENESS no matter where you go in the world. Mexicans, Filipinos and French-Irish in Cali can go home anytime they get ready...but what of Blacks? Where can you go? These other races immediately encounter one another and fall into place. We blacks do not. We're too insecure to put our pettiness down--and we hate seeing our black face in front of us--unless it's a "compromised" yellow one.
World wide...Caucasoids Produce the world...Negroids consume the world. This is killing us both spiritually and financially. It's also destroying our greatest wealth...which is our unity as a people. WE ARE...A PEOPLE.
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 03:41 pm: |
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You know, though racism is corrosive and sometimes seems to distract one from one's goals, on the other hand it can be a great motivator--though one that I might want to do without sometimes.
I sometimes think I would be most average if it had not been for this thing, charging me up, challenging me, making me think.
It could be in the vein of "that which does not kill me makes me stronger . . ." |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 02:36 am: |
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Well, i agree with all the posters, but i'll add a typical argument once and then i'll leave it alone.
Should black people be able to acknowledge the validity of hard work and self-determination AND fight racism directly, through affirmative action, reparations, responsible politicians. Are not black peoples' problems both within themselves ( self-love and group love) and in society, which has laws, policies, and social norms that are racist. Racial profiling, unequal sentencing, etc.... |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 12:13 pm: |
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Yukio--
we have both. We have the individual problems everyone else has, and the societal problems of racism. The micro and the macro, if you will. |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 05:54 pm: |
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Yeah, micro and macro or individual agency and structural inequality. It is difficult for me to listen to folk who give an either/ or analysis, because we have oprah, and she is good at what she does, but there are thousands of people who are more intelligent and worked as hard as she did and will never achieve what she has...Most of us won't! But there is something to working hard!
Yet, i do see brothas and sista preaching of racism and how we're still slaves to the white man etc....but yet, some of the same cats are unemployed, drugged up, and living with their own children in their Mamas' house. Still there is something to racism!
So i think both positions are accurate and that they both need to be addressed.
Sorry, i said i'd leave alone!
Cheers! |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2003 - 01:13 pm: |
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Yukio, Chris, anyone lets do this:
Let take any problem you feel Black people in America have currently that is due to racism feel and I'll play devils advocate and argue why the problem is not based upon racism. If you are game please limit it to a single issue. That way it will be easier to maintain focus.
Peace,
Troy |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2003 - 02:07 pm: |
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Troy,
I'm really glad you're issuing this challenge and taking this subject to the next level. I caught so much flak when I suggested that "racism should not be allowed to neutralize ambition, but should instead motivate it", that I just signed off. I have every confidence that in "re-formatting" this issue, you will score some major points! |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2003 - 05:08 pm: |
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Troy,
Interesting. The premises of my post, however, was that racism is just part, however essential, of the problem. Your proposal, i think, reinforces an either/or analysis which i completely reject. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 10:13 am: |
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OK Troy:
How about the case of a young black man who was recently found hanging from the town water tower in Springfield Missouri allegedly because he was dating a white woman?
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 12:41 pm: |
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Damn Chris,
That is too easy, but i get your point. What ever one's position is, it'll usually proceed along the lines of the role of the individual and/or the role of the social structure. If we're gonna talk about these discussions, i believe that both categories need to be addressed. |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2003 - 08:43 pm: |
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Chris:
I'm not familiar with the details of the event you mentioned. Your use of the word “allegedly” implies that even you are not familiar with all the details of why this young man was murdered. But for the sake of argument I'll assume what you said is true and the event was motivated solely by racism.
One of the biggest problems we have in understanding the impact of racism in this society, and how to combat it, is that we focus on individual cases and extrapolate them to a broader society. "I got laid off" therefore America is racist. In addition we attempt to pass legislation to get people to stop behaving in a racist fashion
We have laws in New York to address cases like the one you pointed out. They fall under the category of "bias crimes". Basically someone said that a white person killing a Black person is worst than a Black person killing a Black person or a white person killing a white person. If it can be shown that the white person killed the black person because of racism; the resulting penalties are more severe. This extends to a host of other crimes including property damage, and assault.
Apparently the intent of the law is to stop people from being racist. But this puts an unnecessary burden on our criminal justice system as she tries to prosecute these, often, difficult to prove cases. These laws also increase racial tension as lawyers, politicians and others try to prove bias where it is not (witch hunts). Whether I kill because I hate your race or because I want the contents of your wallet is really immaterial – one criminal should not be held less culpable that the other in this type of murder case.
To answer your question more directly Chris; I fail to see how this individual’s terrible circumstance impacts Black people in America. This murder, however horrible, is a rare occurrence and really provides little in the way of a cause for our problems in America.
The crime you described is a classic “Lynching”: The total number of Black people lynching from 1882, when statistics first became available, to 1968 is 3,446 (1). This I’m sure is a conservative count. The total since 1968 is very small. Approx 95% of the Black people murdered in the US are murdered by other blacks.
There were two Black police officers killed by black “men” in NYC this year. We are even killing the Brothers who are trying to protect the community. I’m sure some folks will say that they were just “tools” of the white man keeping a brother down – of course that is nonsense, but there are those who feel this way.
Chris, the crime you mentioned is the ultimate tragedy for the families close to this young man. However in the larger scheme of things this tragedy and others like it over the last 40 years, taken in aggregate, would be a poor excuse to use to explain our plight today.
(1)Robert Zangrando, cites statistics for the period of 1882–1968 in his book, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching. Using figures from the Tuskegee Institute he finds a total of 4,742 for the 87-year period, of which 1,297 victims were white and 3,445 were black.
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 02:42 pm: |
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Troy:
That's one for me. You said you would be able to argue that the problem was not due to racism. You were unable to do that.
I'll give you another chance. This one, too, is based on a true story:
My sister was working for an auto dealership owned by a black man. Thae black dealership was located in a white neighborhood (it has since relocated--for reasons that should be obvious to you after you read this) The black dealer employed both black and white salespeople.
One of the white sales people made a sale of four cars to a white woman. When my sister congratulated him on the sale, he told her what he had had to do to make it.
Becomins suspicious at the number of black folk on the premises, she asked him, "Is this dealership owned by a black man?"
The salesman replied, "No."
She said, "Good. I don't believe in making any of THEM rich."
Your move. |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 04:01 pm: |
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Chris you are missing my point. It is probably because my original request was not clear. When I spoke about Black people I meant Black people collectively, not individually.
Of course there individuals who are racists.
What I'm attempting to argue is that these individuals or even their organizations do not explain the current predicament of Black people in America.
The type of examples I might have expected would have been something like; the "record industry is racist because they only promote mysogynistic, "Bling-Bling" worshiping, gangsters while our "conscious Rappers" get no play".
I recall when I was a kid walking in the wrong neighborhood in NYC and having rocks throw at me and being called "ni--er". The same has happened to me in Raliegh NC. However these incidents were virtually inconsquential to my life and certainly to Black people in general.
Now in this context do you have any examples?
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 05:18 pm: |
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Troy:
That's two for me. It was not an individual predicament--had you been that young man in Springfield, or that car dealer, who by the way had to relocate once the white people around him found out he was black and stopped patronizing his business, you would have had the same thing happen to you. You, or I, or any of the people on this list or anyone else. It would not have mattered who you were, your sex, how you feel, whether you are a Republican, you would have been Black.
You did not qualify your challenge at first, you just said, pick a situation where racism had occurred and you would present an argument that it was not.
Your failure to do so admits that there are situations wherein there is no other explanation for what is happening.
When they threw rocks at you it was because you were black. Not because of anything else. The events would not have been inconsequential had the people throwing rocks decided to take it further to kill you or beat you into a coma--like they did Yusef Hawkins or any number of other blacks who have been attacked.]
The way you present this is like this is some intellectual discussion or almost like its a game--it is no game to those of us who ignore the possible consequences of our actions--such as driving or walking in the wrong area.
Okay, I believe you are moving the goalposts, but I'll do it your way--
"The record industry is racist because they only promote mysogynistic, "Bling-Bling" worshipping gangsters while our "conscious Rappers" get no air play."
Your move. |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 06:00 pm: |
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Hi Troy,
I've got a good one for you.
Why is it that when I go to buy pantyhose in the "Women's Section"---the ones marked "NUDE" or "FLESH Colored" are always pink-toned?
Why does "pink tone" represent the nude legs of women in a nation where about 120 million women (black, latina, Asian and otherwise) do not have pink legs?
THAT...is racism plain and simple. *Also...why do Black men always..ONLY notice "racism" as it pertains to their lives? Why are they unable to immediately see it in terms of the situation I just explained?
I say that because...I complained to Thomas (my love) about the unfair labeling of the pantyhose and it took him a good few minutes to recognize my point that only the White man's mother is recognized as an AUTHENTIC WOMAN in this American society. It then took him another few minutes to recognize that it's indeed "RACIST" for this particular society to consider the White woman as the "Woman representative of ALL women".
Thomas is a Black man from Belize--one who has definitely been through racism--and yet he could not immediately identify racism when it affected BLACK WOMEN ONLY. That disturbs and disappoints me greatly with regard to Black men in general. They stare at you and go, "I don't get it...what's the problem?"
Anyway, why are pink-fleshed pantyhose called "NUDE" or "FLESH" if not for racism plain and simple?
Kola
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 07:31 pm: |
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Troy:
I have been thinking about how you talked about how rocks were thrown at you in N.C. and New York, and insults were yelled at you. You say this is inconsequential to your life.
Let me tell you what legally happened to you. You were assaulted. It is an assault if you so much as raise your hand to a person in a threatening manner. A person might be liable to you for civil damages. In many places it would be a misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment.
This is troubling my friend. You feel this is inconsequential that you feel you can be assaulted with impunity. When would it be consequential. When it happened twice? Three times? Do you, do we as black people, exist to be assaulted with impunity? If it is okay to be assaulted, what else is it okay to do?
I think this is troubling. What would you do if your kids came home and told you that somebody had thrown rocks on them and called them nigger? Would you say, "That's allright kids. That's your job here in America. Human target. You don't let that stop you, just go back out there and don't forget to duck or run real fast next time?"
A guy like you ought to be able to handle two at once if you think answering your own is too easy.
True Story:
Martin Luther King Day in St. Louis. Downtown there is a large rally at the Old Courthouse, march from there to a Cathedral on 14th Street for a program with prayers and gospel singing.
The Ku Klux Klan holds a rally right down the street. Bullhorns. Speeches about how Dr. King was a Commie and a philanderer. Racist flags.
YOur move. |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 07:36 pm: |
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I don't get it?! (just kidding ;-) )
Hi Kola. It would be a stretch to call this situation racism. The flesh colored or nude descriptor probably applies to large number of consumers who will buy the product. Perhaps this is a vestige of a by gone era or just insensitive labeling.
I'm sure you can appreciate there is no single color in the known universe that could be called "nude" and that could accurately be applied to more than a small percentage of women.
Of course, as you mentioned Black women are not the only ones who might have your issue. I'm suspect even some eurpoan women would have the same issue like those in the south with perpetual tans.
In much the same way left handed people, people who are much taller or much shorter than average, the handicaped, etc, are conforted with similiar problems each day.
Of course there are those in each of these group who would go take things to the extreme and say "America is anti-left-handed people" because the gear shift is on the right hand side of cars in the US.
I would not be surprised if there was some manufacturer who has already addressed this problem. Surely if the other 120 million women are equally distrubed; some enterprising people will come up with a naming convention for their shades of panty hose which accounts for the numerous shades of humanity being careful not to use the word nude -- and get paid!
I suspect however most people just pick the color they need and go on about their business, completely oblivious to the rasicm some would ascribe to situtation.
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Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 08:12 pm: |
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Chris:
Lets put this in perspective. I have also, as a kid, been held at gun point as a robber relieved my mother of her purse. I've watch another "bother" hold a knife at my little sister's neck as my Mom's purse was taken yet another time. I fought kids in gangs and I've been chased by gangs.
During my childhood I've been called all kind of mean things by my own boys. Don't get me wrong I dished it out too. Probably the thing I was called that had the most signifcant impact on my life was being called a "brainiac".
Being a "brainiac", to me, meant I was not really down. So as a youngster I spent time don't stuff I should not have been doing so that I could "be down with the crew".
So believe me when I say being called an "N--er" by some stupid white boys, I did not even know, it is inconsequential.
Your point about what would I do if my kids came home and told me the same thing happened to them. I would have to assess the situation, as I did in the 70's when it happened to me. Was I hurt? no. Was I in an unfamiliar neigborhood? yes. Could I identify the kids? No (too far way), Did I have to go back to that area? no, etc, etc Man I did not even tell MY parents about the situation.
As far as your point about the Klan -- they are a non-entity as well. They have little meaningful support even in there own (white) community. How has the Klan impacted out lifes in the last few decades? What is there relevance today? How is their brand of racism keeping us down today. You tell me.
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 08:20 pm: |
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Kola,
Brilliant question!
Troy,
Consider these statements, and btw, they're not for your debate, just something to think about.
Black people are black people. White people are people.
Black people are poor and white people are poor.
Black people are criminalized. White people are not criminalized.
Black people need to be more mainstream. white people are mainstream.
Black women are welfare queens. Most women on welfare are white.
Black people represent affirmative action. White women are the largest recipients of affirmative action.
In other words, black have the same problems as white people, PLUS racism and Euro-USist world view.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 09:06 pm: |
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Thank You, Yukio.
You just answered my question.
Black women are Black people. White women are Human Beings.
That is why my sisters are called Welfare Queens...when it's mostly White women on welfare.
The only reason I'm not stewing Troy Johnson for dinner (LOL) is because he's only playing "devil's advocate". He doesn't really feel that way about our dilemna (and for the record--MANY black women have complained bitterly about the labeling of things). He doesn't really feel that way about our dilemna--right Troy?
LOL
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 12:39 am: |
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Here's my 2 cents. A person's neighborhood is their turf. An intruder of any race might have been called ethnic slurs and pelted with rocks. And are panty hose of a black shade an example of reverse racism?
An interesting side note is that there was a time when AA women used to complain because when they went to purchase hosiery, white salesladies would only bring out dark shades to show them. Maybe females seeking an appropriate nude shade, should patronize their own race and buy hosiery manufactured by black companies, a tint I'm sure white women desiring a nude shade would complain about.
My final observation is that it apparently doesn't occur to some people that African Americans are a minority. The white majority by virtue of being the majority is the "mainstream," like it or not.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 02:49 am: |
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Cynique...I believe that a good deal of so called "racism" is not deliberate or premeditated. I also think the word "race" means family and that some measure of racism is completely NATURAL.
If a white woman and I are sitting by the river and we both give birth to a child...I certainly will love and care for my own child, the one that came from my own body far more than I could ever love and care about hers. That is human nature and it's RIGHT. If it comes to it, I will kill that White woman and her child so that me and mines can prosper and live. Or she might kill me and mines first.
A lot of White people's inhumanity towards Blacks...is because they love their White children. They want their children to have...EVERYTHING.
This is why I think Black Americans spend too much time obsessing with White people and race. Racism is part of the natural order of the human condition. It is NEVER going away--it can't. I definitely accept that and concentrate on building my own kingdom for my own people, my own race (family).
No one would like to see the different races live in peace and harmony as much as I would...but we are nowhere near even the most minute possibility of such an occurrence. As I explained to you months ago, one group of people can't like and appreciate another group of people...until they RESPECT that group of people. Until the Black man is willing to kill that White man and his white children...then the Caucasoid has no reason to respect us.
To me...our people (both in Africa and in the Americas) keep sending a message that we our willing to kill...our OWN CHILDREN...as we do each generation in a million different ways...in order to cater to and Maintain the White Master's society--his White Society. This is why we get no respect. This is why Racism is so continuously malignant in our lives.
Each time we choose the White man's mother (the image of the White woman) over our own...each time we choose the White man's Face over our own...each time we GIVE AWAY--just give away without charge another piece of ourselves...we are losing the respect of the entire world and we are giving Racists every confirmation that we don't deserve to be respected as equals.
Black people are at the bottom of Planet Earth's entire social system...because we are not willing to KILL those who have killed us.
In India..they sterilize black-colored Indian women. Brazil--same thing; they kill black boys and pile them high for being "darkskinned". In Arab nations--Black men are castrated, black women castrated. Black Children, you see, are being KILLED.
It annoys me to no end that people like Sidney Poitier and Kofi Annan and these new "mixed race" multiculturalists really believe that the Master Race...actually RESPECTS them. Or that their own black children really KNOW them. Or that their "success" means anything tangible for the reality of the BLACK segment of the Human Race.
Notice...these Black men, Sidney Poitier, Kofi Annan, Harry Belafonte...have killed off their own children and taken up the White child in their arms.
Sidney Poitier married a White woman and his two daughters are engaged to WHITE MEN. End of Seed. Harry Belafonte--same story--married white..his 2 kids look white...they MARRIED white. End of SEEED.
Just niggers becoming nothing. BUT NOTICE...they didn't even respect their own humanity. For I assure you...that if their message (and our message) WAS: "White man...I am willing to kill you and your white children so that mines may prosper and live."
That moment, Cynique....is the moment when RACISM will get deflated. That is the moment when the Caucasoid race will have no other alternative but to ACCEPT, RESPECT and BEFRIEND the Black man.
Nobody respects a kiss-ass slave. Or their bastard children.
We have NOT fought for our children and we have been too cowardly to kill those who have historically killed our children and used us as chattel to build empires....for their children's benefit.
We get what we accept...we blacks have Reaped what we have sewn. As I preach to my fans--"It's time give birth...to a new King".
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 02:56 am: |
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Now, Troy...why don't you play "devil's advocate" and explain to everyone why it is that my post was NOT racist against both Blacks and Whites.
LOL
This'll be fun!
Troy, you're so good at this!! I just adore a smart man!!
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 03:02 am: |
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The point is that there shouldn't be one standard of human(whiteness becomes the normal and standard of beauty, of intelligence, etc), since there is only one in this country, if you don't follow it you're criminalized, labeled as ignorant, or it is commodified, so that white folk can make some money. And if they're or anyone is going to tell me that i shouldn't embrace my people and culture then i have a problem.
I think we have to be honest and be able to separate individual problems with group problems(in others words everyone can not come for the ride, some of us have sprinters shoes on but they know its marathon. Yet, our communities should have services, health, elderly, etc...all black folks aren't our friends. crime is crime.) As a we are criminalized and our humanity is constantly questioned. Money is really not the point, since most people will not make much money, regardless of their race, but to act like it's not there or to just accept it is unfortunate. We have a history of resistance, whether it is in the US, Africa, or the Caribbean.... read Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 12:14 pm: |
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Kola and Yukio:
You're lecturing to the wrong person. I have never said that racism and all of its incidious ramifications isn't a problem. My thing has always been about surviving in a hostile climate. Rhetoric doesn't get the job done; resiliance does. |
Chris Hayden
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 01:49 pm: |
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Troy:
That's three for me. You said you would be able to explain why these acts weren't racist. You have stated that they were the acts of individuals, that they were inconsequential, but you cannot say they were not racist.
The point is that your boys who called you braniac did not do that because you were black. The individuals who do racist acts maybe acting individually, but they are manifesting what is a problem in their society--i.e. racism.
Certainly I cannot control how a person feels and thinks. It is rare that a racist will not act on his convictions, how can he or she not?
Again, your reaction to what you would do if what happened to your kids is troubling. Nowhere did you say you would be angry about it. This seems a problem with Black folk, that they willingly send their kids out to be punching bags and victims. Shrug it off. Where does it end? If you should shrug off verbal assault, maybe you should shrug off physical assault. If you should shrug off physical assault, maybe you should shrug off sexual assault.
Maybe if you are a black policeman and see Mark Fuhrman victimizing a black motorist, maybe you should keep quiet about it. These individuals are not becoming racist in a vaccum, springing up sui generis and in separation--they are only the extreme and individual manifestations of a mindset that is society wide.
Here's another one for you. A white female teacher is teaching a history class. The class is all white save for two mixed race kids. One of the white kids asks the teacher what she thinks of interracial marriage.
She responds that she doesn't believe in it, that the children of interracial marriage are dirty and neglected and that people should marry their own kind.
Should she be fired? |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 02:15 pm: |
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CHRIS:
The teacher would have been smarter to say something African such as--"A fish and a bird might mate...but where will they build their nest?"
But yes, she should be fired. Because interracial love is a natural human love that has always been in this world.
But if I were that teacher (a black woman teaching a mostly black class with 2 mixed kids in the room)...I would also mention to my students that in America...what we see more often is not interracial love but an epidemic of self-hate, misplaced revenge and white privileage...which is passed off on darker communities as interracial "love". And in America, that status of being interracially connected is a far Higher Status than just being two black people in love with one another. There's no doubt about that.
Just the fact that the majority of Black men in this nation are paired up, almost exclusively, with women much lighter-skinned than the mothers who gave birth to them....and that the majority of White men are paired up with women who look almost Exactly like the white mothers who gave birth to them...is PROOF POSITIVE that there is an imbalance of self-respect and racial parity in American society. As I mentioned before--one group covets giving birth to children who are more like the children of the Superior Group. Harry Belafonte can preach about black equality all day...but he did not care to bring any Black children into the world, nor did his own children. This is when one really has to question the motives behind the socalled "love". THAT issue is separate from interracial love...and in America, that issue taints the authentic validity of interracial love.
Some of us, both black and white, are not against interracial love...as much as we're against the epidemic of self-hate that tries to claim itself as "love". As Yukio said--every black person is not our friend. That's right. Because the desire to literally breed black folks out of the CLASSROOM and call it love is proof positive that we blacks indeed have a lot of enemies right in our own ranks.
Forgive me, I couldn't resist. LOL
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 03:59 pm: |
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Chris:
Do you think there is a difference between bigotry and racism? |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 05:25 pm: |
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Cynique,
I wasn't preaching to you; i was giving you my perspective.
You wrote:
"My thing has always been about surviving in a hostile climate. Rhetoric doesn't get the job done; resiliance does."
I agree with the first statement; survival is important, which is why i made the comment about coming to a marathon in sprint shoes. The last statement you made, well, I think it is/was irrelevant and irreverent. I'm not fighting, threatening, or trying to disrespect you, so i would prefer that we not do the personal attacks, however fun and entertaining they may seem. Also, the marathon analogy illustrates that i'm talking about being resilient not a rhetorician.
If it wasn't personal, then i apologize for misrepresenting your point. |
Anonymous
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 07:38 pm: |
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Yukio
In defense of Cynique, if her last statement was irrelevant then why did you respond with the "Also, the marathon analogy illustrates that i'm talking about being resilient not a rhetorician"? That appears to be a direct response to that statement. Also, I don't believe Cynique was pinning the "rhetoric" tag on you. It seems to me she was talking in general terms . Cynique gets slapped on the hands enough around here without being wrongly accused. |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 10:00 pm: |
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Anonymous,
Greetings. Within my post, i already apologized if i was misrepresenting her comments, so perhaps you should have sent out your "defense" without appending my name. You seem to be unneccessarily slapping my hands...lol!
Yet, since you asked, here it goes:
She posted her remarks to two people and i have responded for my part to her. The post says, "Kola and Yukio," so i assumed that it refered to myself.
It was irrelevant because the nature or character of the statement, "Rhetoric doesn't get the job done; resiliance does," implies that we were posturing for play. I am earnest.
In addition, I responded "Also, the marathon analogy illustrates that i'm talking about being resilient not a rhetorician?" because prior to her, "rhetoric tag," in the post that she responded to, I had already made the statement concerning the marathon, suggesting that i agreed that resilience is the name of the game for black people, as well as alluding that her comment was again, irrelevant as it pertained to me since i already made the comment. |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 11:18 pm: |
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I always respect Cynique's opinion. She's a brilliant woman and a promising writer. I think very highly of whatever it is she thinks. Same goes for Yukio.
We come from extraordinarily different backgrounds, we don't see from the same vantage points, but I think that everyone on these boards...that I've ever read...is very intelligent and has some important part of puzzle that we must all put together.
I certainly don't think any of us should have our hands slapped just for voicing our opinions and I pray that I haven't offended anyone, because I am known to be heavyhanded and can appear to be ABSOLUT--when I'm actually anything but.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 12:06 am: |
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Thanks "Anonymous"! I appreciate your post. Kola and Yukio, you know you my girls. You keep me on my toes.  |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 03:04 am: |
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Kola and Cynique
Love back to ya! |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 01:01 pm: |
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You may want to print this 'cause I've dusted off the 'ole soap box...
Kola, sure I'm playing devils advocate to a certain extent. I could easily argue both sides, probably because I've been on both side of the fence on many of these issues.
I was raised to be a racist, not by my mother, but by society. Some of it comes from empty or stale rhetoric from our so called Black leaders, some of it was from the government fostering an environment of dependency, some of it was from uneducated teachers feeding us misinformation, some of it comes from our media which puts a sensational, emotional spin on everything, and so forth.
My opponents are not individuals who would throw rocks at a stranger in a neighborhood, those people are just symptoms of a bigger problem. In fact if I retaliated against them, in kind, I would just be contributing to the problem. My opponents are the people and policies in place which perpetuate the conditions I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Kola, I love your sense of history and the way you express it. I think we start to diverge on our assessment of the current environment and what the future holds. Now before you start boiling water for "Troy Stew" let me explain what I mean.
We already know that all of the people in the world are decedents of Africa people. We also know that were great civilizations in African when white people were still living in caves. You know this better than I. Racism has prevented this information from being told, remember Blacks had to be subhuman. This was the way slavery worked and how even so called religious white people justified going into Africa to bring "God" to the savages. They prevented Slaves from learning to read not because they did not they think it was possible for them to learn, but to keep them ignorant and thereby preserve their investment.
The least successful, the most down trodden, the most likely to end up in jail are typically the most uneducated. They are more victims of their own ignorance than of a racist society. That does not mean one needs a college education (in some cases that is part of the problem). We just need more accurate and honest interpretation of history, economics, finance, world politics, etc. A better education is part of the solution, better parents (teenagers should not be having kids you can legally have baby before you can smoke or drive in many places), a more cohesive community, better government, etc. This is not a simple problem nor will it be solved quickly or by addressing one aspect of the problem. But people want fast solutions they care more about themselves than they care for their children and can not delay gratification. Folks are "living for the weekends"
Carter G Woodson most famous quote is more as appropriate today than it ever was almost 100 years ago:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."
We don't control our thinking, or our thinking is the based upon very limited information, disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies
I believe much of the racism we see now is residue from a bygone era and something ignorant people hold onto to give themselves a sense of superiority. Poor, uneducated white people are usually your most virulent racists. Educated people don't have to be racist, neither nor do educated Black people and many are not -- even though they may behave in ways that could be construed as being racist by someone who views the world that way.
Kola, like it or not we live in a global community. You are a prime example of this fact. During the day I work for a big American company. I work with men and women from literally all over the planet. This company is fortunate because they have been able to pull from a talent pool much larger than is available to most organizations as a result they are better able to compete in a global environment and provide a better service to their clients. If they did not have this diversity, or rather if they were racist they would have unnecessarily crippled their ability to compete on a global scale. It is not in this company's economic best interest to be racist. Imagine if a basketball team limited their member to only white players or players who were only American.
As the world continues to grow smaller Black people are going to marry white people -- get used to it. That is the future. The aversion to "mogrelization" as white racists like to call it is backward thinking. Most African-Americans have white blood and so do many so called "white" people. Historically this was the result of rape -- today it the result of choice. You mentioned Belafonte, Poitier married white and now their progeny has married white. Look, I would not do it -- I was not raised that way. However I have absolutely no problem with them doing it. If they found some they loved enough to marry and have a family -- more power to them. They are fortunate.
The view of keeping the Black race or any race "pure" (whatever that means) is a relic of the past, in addition to being illogical and impossible. 1,000 years from now people are going to look back at our views on this thing called race and wonder what drugs we were doing. Most of society's perspectives on race are anachronistic.
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Chris, my Brother, you certainly have a predilection for reading something I wrote for, assumming something I did not say, then taking it to the extreme to support your point. Just because I did not mention anger does not mean I would not be angry. I said I would have to assess the situation. As a parent you send their children into the world everyday it would be naively for me to think they will encourage something that does not please them. At the same time caring parents do non willing subject their kids to become human punching bags -- to seriously suggest that I would do so it not worth of defense.
Racists do not act on their convictions. That is simply false. Just as one does not act on their other evil thoughts. Of course laws and the associated punishments are a deterrent, but so is the ones conscious, common sense, and social climate less tolerant of racist behavior. I certainly don't act on my ALL my racist or other socially unacceptable thoughts -- do you. Only the stupid, ignorant or socio-paths do that.
b.t.w. that teacher deserves to be shot by firing squad. A "teacher" who would make a statement like that in the classroom is ignorant, stupid, or an evil sociopath or some combination thereof. Either way she needs to be removed from the classroom. If after all of her training and education she could not determine the absurdity of her statement before she made it. She certainly needs to be fired. I can forgive the racism but not the statement, not made by a teacher in front of a classroon full of students. Racism became the problem when it manifested it the statement.
I might like they way your wife looks, but I'm not going to rape her. I might like your watch, but I'm not going to steal it when you turn you back. Do you see my point? People have all kinds of thoughts we have to learn to understand them so that we can behave appropriately -- particularly when the failure to do so results in damage that my last a life time and even effect your children. I'm asserting that the least successful among us is poorly prepared to make these assessments.
That is why I sarcastically, titled this post "The luxury of racism as an excuse" because racism is viewed as a valid excuse in our quarters. The excuse is invalid for the vast majority of us in the vast majority of situations. Black folks take advantage of this luxury in a minute. white people don't have such a "luxury" (though nowadays they have absurd notion called "reverse" racism).
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 02:01 pm: |
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Troy, you're one of my heroes. I love you and your web site. I brag about you all the time. You're my idea of an important man. Even if we disagreed--that would not change. I would always honor you, because you have honored me by allowing me to be heard. You are also a black man, so that takes guts.
I'm in training with a voice coach now for my upcoming shows in New York (Central Park) and Washington, D.C. (Anacostia Park). I can't sing, but I feel that I must sing the ancient Hebrew Nile river songs to really conncect to the Black Americans. They need nourishment from their real blood, I feel. I expect we'll meet in May, Troy. But I hope you will say a few words during the show. Tanya Howard will be contacting you when it's time to formalize everything.
People should read this wonderful interview that I did with Afro-Mama. It sums me
up.
I am not as SCARY as I seem to be. I know that many find me terrifying and outrageous.
http://www.afromama.org/kolainterview.html
.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 02:13 pm: |
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Incidentally, Troy.
As I said...I am not against interracial love. But I do believe that the playing field is truly uneven.
I have lived with a white man for 5 years. I have had other interracial dealings as well.
I AM NOT PURE. I have Arab hermetic blood...Falasha blood (Hebrew semetic)...GisiWaaq (Somali blood, also hermetic).
But I never once felt that dating a black person was "beneath" me...or that dating a White person raised my "status". Black Americans, Senegalese, Africans in France, Belgium and the U.K. are NOTORIOUS for this RACIST BEHAVIOR. They spread these ideals.
And I disagree that "love" had anything to do with Poitier and Belafonte marrying white women--otherwise, at least one of their children would have loved Black people enough to marry someone Black...if there was "love" involved. Clearly, those men thought that being married to the dominant culture was their VALIDATION. Not one of those men has produced a seed to represent his own Black people. Only those white women have been honored and passed down.
This is typical of "Blacks" in the new Global Community who preach "Black Pride" (ala Poitier) and then fail to do as Malcolm X said....Make It Plain.
I could love a White man, truly. But I could live without having given birth to my 2 black sons. And I have taught HOW to make generations--as any decent mother would. Color has nothing to do with it. But neither should Hate.
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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 02:29 pm: |
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Troy:
I kinda figured that old parental protective feeling would kick in when I raised that and if you thought I was trying to imply you are a poor parent accept my apologies.
But I remember some of my first experiences in integrated schooling at high school--First day of school seeings signs that read, "Nigger Go Home and This is Ku Klux Klan Whiteland, Nigger Stay Our", having white teenagers surround the school and having to run a gauntlet to the bus, parents having big meetings when it was known we would be square dancing in gym class (white and black kids)--being troubled by all this--my parents telling me to keep a stiff uppper lip.
It is hard enough to get one's lessons even when one doesn't go through all that. At one time I bought their idea that I am better off for all that. Now, I say, no I am not. Certainly at some time I would have to face racism head on. But I have noticed that people who delayed that moment until college, or until they entered the work force, have done just as well as those who got the jolt early. And some times better. I had some friends who were permanently embittered by the experience.
In your answer to Kola, you state you were raised to be racist. You put it up to stale and overused rhethoric by some black leaders--only one of the reasons, for sure. But what was this rhetoric in reaction to? Did they manufacture the U.S. record over the last 500 years? Maybe folks nowadays ain't wearing hoods and say they aren't racist. But just because nobody is lynching me in the public square don't mean everything is allright.
If racists do not act on their convictions, what are they acting on? They are acting on the conviction that they are superior to Black people for sure.
I am a product of higher education. I can tell you that I saw as much racism there as I have anywhere--I remember one dorm had a klavern (complete with hoods)--you talk about the Klan being inconsequential--maybe you should live here in St. Louis where they had a radio show, and the White Citizen's Council still does, (four of them were on our City's Board of Education as recently as 10 years ago--how do you think that affected the education of Black kids?) where a stretch of the interstate is posted with a sign that declares they are responsible for trash pickup along that way. We don't all live in New York City. You got New York, L.A., San Francisco and all that in between that is the REAL America.
I saw more racism in graduate school--I can recall sitting with a black woman who was attending Harvard telling me she never hated white people before she got there.
You assume that the more educated a person becomes, the less likely they are to be racist. DuBois thought that once, too.
These people know what they are doing. If not, how do you explain Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, George Wallace, David Duke, Strom Thurmond, Matthew Hale--these men aren't idiots, they are some of the best and the brightest. How do you explain the Bell Curve and The Turner Diaries, which are the product of educated men--scientists?
There is something deeper going on here my friend. I don't know why people are racist--I can think it is not ignoracne, but fear, a false feeling of superiority, and that they are just downright evildoers.
By the way, the teacher was fired. She is appealing her termination on First Amendment Grounds. The case took place here in Missouri--I bet at some point she gets a court to agree with her.
You might not rape my wife and you might not steal my watch but there are people who will call me friend and do that, and they don't have to be sex starved or poor or ignorant to do it. There is no economic group that does not have thieves and rapists. Rich people can get probation or mental counseling for it instead of having to do time, or can buy off the victims.
Re us understanding people's thoughts so that I can behave appropriately--I don't see your point.
Can you elaborate?
Racism as an excuse? For what? Until 1965 large numbers of black people had no right to vote, to proper schooling--now you figure that ought to disappear overnight? What about kids who were raised in households where the parents only got to the eight grade (in parts of Arkansas Iknow for sure, and probably in other areas of the rural South school was suspended for Blacks during planting and harvesting season--you are getting behind and in ways you can never make up)
Now you will point, no doubt to persons amongst our race that overcame these handicaps and rose--Richard Wright, Frederick Douglass, perhaps even yourself. There have always been Blacks who overcame--why should we always be measured by our exceptional people. One thing you should get straight, my friend. Everybody is NOT capable of going to Harvard or becoming a nuclear physicist. Most people are just average and that's all they are ever going to be. And some are below.
Racism as an excuse, for what? maybe it ain't an excuse that black people in North St. Louis were denied loans to fix up their houses, but granted loans on cars or to move to North County (so they could drive the whites out further) but it is the reason those folks were unable to use money to build up capital.
If them punks throwing rocks at you had hit you upside your head, I wouldn't have called the lump on your head an excuse.
Maybe you can elaborate on that, too. What situations are blacks using racism as an invalid excuse? Who is doing it--I'll be willing to bet you are conjuring up the Willie Horton type image of the black mugger or purse snatcher who has victimized another black--although I have had contact with such black criminals and never heard them say anything like that, it is always somebody else putting these words in their mouth, and what would you expect a criminal to do but lie?
Just like in my posts above. They were all extreme examples, but go back to your original challenge. You were going to play devil's advocate and produce situations wherein you could argue that racism was not to blame and I was illustrating that there are times and places where that is impossible. It is due to racism, racism and nothing but racism. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 02:42 pm: |
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Cynique:
Websters defines bigotry as extreme intolerance of any creed, belief or opinion that differs from one's own.
Racism is defined as a belief or doctrine that inherent difference among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior.
I know that the terms are used interchangeably but this would indicate that there is a difference
That one could be a bigot without being racist. |
Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 03:08 pm: |
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Hi Kola:
You might very well be 100% correct Belafonte, et. al. I just refrain from making a judgment in cases like this because I have no way of knowing what is going on in their lifes and behind closed doors. You may have more information or be a keener judge or both. You also have to conceed that you can be wrong as well.
Your words regarding me are too kind. You have always been a keen supporter of the web site and myself: in financial terms, in deed, and in word. That type of support is so rare one does not often know how to accept it. But you are a rare person which may be why folks have trouble accepting you sometimes. Thank you for your support!
Everyone else, including Yukio, Chris, Cynique you are also rare in the sense that few people are willing to expose their ideas to the public for anyone to rip apart.
I know y'all are doing what you can to make sure our people know who they are, in your personal lives. I hope folks who read these posts (but choose not to post) are prompted to think about their own ideas and thoughts on the subject and in turn discuss these issues with family and friends.
America's race problems are not going to solved by anything written on this discussion board, but hopefully it will serve as just one seed to generating positive thought, which leads to action, which can utimately lead to change. In much the same way reading the right books can.
Thanks again,
Peace
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 04:02 pm: |
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All posters,
It seems that some of us have discussed racism as a relict of the past or the primarily the beliefs of individuals. Could we talk about structural racism?
I'll start with poverty, crime, and welfare. Now, i know that some black folk are lazy and some are criminal, but this a systemic analysis, assumming that we can agree that all people participate in crime, etc...
I think the criminalization of black people ,as illustrated by different sentencing for crack/cocaine, police brutality, etc...is essential to understanding our groups'predicament.
I think this is facilitated by this countries' dehumanization of black people. This dehumanization constructs us as inherently criminal, lazy, and dependent.
I think there are several ways this is done:
I think that US culture, via the school, family, and the economy is white supremacist, consequently all knowledge in infused within a Eurocentric perspective, that is generalized and normalized. This normalization, leads us to see all life, experiences,values,culture, and basic knowledge within a Eurocentric perspective, so that what is beautiful, how families should be organized, and our basic Reason is Eurocentric. Hence, the importance of Carter Woodsons'quote which Troy used.
Now, this eurocentric perspective as well as US propanda, ie the American dream, leads us to accept many of the US' tenets concerning hard work, patrioticism, etc..
Now, here's how we are criminalized:
Slavery and Jim crow, and the whims of the general economy have placed us into poverty, as a group. As poor people, like whites, we do crime and get on welfare. We, however, are the only ones criminalized and presented as welfare queens, so that we function as scapegoats. In other words, our basic poverty is racialized, so that what we do makes it seem like a black problem, where as it is really an American problem.
We all know white women are mostly on welfare, although as a group our percentages is higher. The first reason is the legacy of Jim Crow. If we look at poverty generationally, it will take us a couple or so generations to get into the "solid" middle-class. Another reasons is that we are still politically underrepresented and as poor people are shafted, since our poverty is alleged as specific to our race and not partially the consequence of the country's general poverty, then our problems lack poltical credibility, since we are considered the problem not the US.
Then we as black people believe that blacks are more prone to crime and black women are more prone to pregnancy, so that the panacea becomes: ya'll niggers need not be lazy! This is America and we're about hard work, no handouts!
Simultaneously, white folk are poor, most of them are on welfare, and they are killing eachother. Poor people rob, steal, and commit bacis crimes against those people in their communities; hence in poor cities, and areas throughout the US, there is white on white crime. We are only, i think, 12% of this country, so thats alot of crime committed by white folk.
Again, i know black folk participate in crime and some are abusing the welfare system, so as i stated before, i do believe that many of us need to get our shit together, "for the marathon," simultaneosly, this country is racist as fuck and its not just white folk callling us niggers...its hurting our pockets, and limiting our political rights as citizens of this country. |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 02:23 am: |
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Keeping in mind Chris' definitions, I think we can conclude that when one individual hurls racial epithets at another person, the name- caller is a "bigot" who is prejudiced against people who are different from him. When one person is biased against another because of skin color, this is "discrimination". These offenses are not protected by a policy, and can be prosecuted if the practice of them breaks an existing law. Bigotry and discrimination are transformed into racism when they represent the norm by virtue of having become institutionalized into the framework of a culture.Institutionalized racism is especially entrenched when it exists in a capitalistic society where power is concentrated in the hands of rich white men who are unwilling to share their power. Now, when AAs get to the place where we want to seize that power and make it our own, then we're talkin' revolution. But when we talk revolution, the logistics become daunting. So, we're back to square one. And the only option seems to lie in learning to manipulate The System. Troy originally joked about having no sympathy for a white man being unable to get a job and support his family because he didn't have to contend with racism. Racism does, indeed, give white people a headstart, but - sometimes a black horse wins the race. Sometimes you may not win the war, but you win a battle...
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yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 03:23 am: |
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No doubt! |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 04:16 am: |
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YUKIO said:
I think that US culture, via the school, family, and the economy is white supremacist, consequently all knowledge in infused within a Eurocentric perspective, that is generalized and normalized. This normalization, leads us to see all life, experiences,values,culture, and basic knowledge within a Eurocentric perspective, so that what is beautiful, how families should be organized, and our basic Reason is Eurocentric. Hence, the importance of Carter Woodsons'quote which Troy used.
KOLA says:
I could not have said it better.
PLEASE EVERYONE...allow me to share with you some side information that is VERY important for you to consider....because this will highlight the fact that our situation as Blacks in America is only one small part of a worldwide shared experience of African people and race...one that is current. *Troy should especially take notice.
This apt statment by Yukio that so brilliantly sums up the reality of racial socialization in AMERICA....applies just as accurately to the nation of SUDAN...where Arabism in place of Eurocentrism is the GOAL and the norm. All who are not Arabs in Sudan are racialized, colorized and criminalized.
Except...we have actual slavery instead of the prison-welfare system. No..there are no plantations...
they simply chain the slaves up to the back of their houses, like dogs, and take them off their leashes when it's time to work. You will find black women, their tongues cut out, working in Arab homes. Some have a foot missing, because they tried to escape. Most slaves in Sudan are women and children--the grown men are usually killed. COLIN POWELL did not lie to you when he reported all this a few years ago.
Palestinians are major buyers of BLACK Sudanese slaves. And black Palestian women (just like in Brazil) are "sterilized" so that the original color of the Palestinians doesn't come back to stain them.
When Black Americans come to live in Sudan..."WHITE" is stamped on their passports as their Race...and let me tell you--they swiftly act it out and look the other way. The Arabs have a policy of calling AA's "my brother...my sister". But behind their backs...Abeed (nigger).
In Sudan, all ARAB people are classified "WHITE". This is why we only have 100,000 Nubians left on the Nile. The Nubian men are famous for becoming MUSLIM and then marrying crippled Arab women, blind or deformed Arab girls...just to have babies who will look LESS NUBIAN. If a Nubian aquires wealth or success--he goes to Turkey and finds a white prostitute out of the alley--MARRIES HER and brings her back to Sudan and makes her a Muslim. This in turn will give him babies who can better pass as "ARAB".
Our own people--the PURE Nubians (blue blacks), Dinkas, Nuers and Shilluks are simply made into slaves or held up behind the front lines of the civil war in the South Sudan (which will someday be called NEW CUSH if the Black majority has its way). We will no longer be called SUDAN..but go back to our original name...CUSH.
In 1996, when I lived with Osama Bin Laden in the Medina (walled city)--there was an incident at the La Maison Arabe inwhich he was beating me and the police were called. They arrived and saw that he was WHITE...and I was BLACK AFRICAN. He told them that I was his concubine. They asked him to "beat me more quietly". Not even my being an American citizen saved me from this kind of treatment, because my skin was BLACK...but being an American did keep them from killing me.
What Yukio has described is the continuing death and systematic bastardization of our people...worldwide. I have been trying to express that our experiences here in America...are NOT unique. In America, we blacks are the 13% minority...but in Sudan, the Arab Elite ruling class is the 13% of the population.
TROY mentioned that I am part of a new Global World experience....this is true...but it doesn't necessarily mean that I am not qualified to speak very strongly to African Americans about their own situation and their own experience. The same self-hate and dehumanization plagues most all African people. I come from a region in Africa that is extraordinarily similar the U.S. with regard to....RACE. We have over 300 ethnic/racial groups in Sudan--250 languages. I myself spoke Arabic, Nilotic Hebrew and Timas dialect. Whole civilizations of Blacks in North Africa have been wiped out by "intermarriage laws" (laws forbidding one black to marry another black). Once there are enough mixed race people...they enslave the blacks or they starve them out or segregate them. Their own parents mind you.
This is why I know who Harry Belafonte is all too well. Sidney Poitier. These people mean well, they think they're being "Progressive" and building bridges of hope....but lets see how connected their great grandchildren will feel to blacks. And let's remember that the grandchildren they have right now....are WHITE. 1/4 Black if you will. This is the MOORS all over again. Or the NUBIANS of today...dwindled down to just 100,000!!! That's as bad as the American Indian!!!
But people say--"Well, it's change."
No...it's not CHANGE...It's EXCHANGE. Instead of doing away with the GREAT MASTER...we simply BECOME a new version of him. This is what I was trying to get Yukio and Cynique to see months ago.
Nothing...for BLACK people...has changed. ALL we have is EXCHANGE.
You all...."I want my Black babies."
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 04:35 am: |
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FOR CLARITY:
Ancient Cush and Nubia are both located in SUDAN (Cush in the South, Nubia in the North)--neither is in the present day country called Ethiopia. Many people in America are confused about that.
We might note that in biblical days, the entire continent of Africa was called Aithiop (Ethiopia) and so noted as such in the Holy Bible. Cush, Egypt and Nubia were mentioned as countries within the continent of Ethiopia. Axum Empire is the territory that would later become today's Ethiopia, the country. The word Ethiopia, just like Sudan and Egypt, means--"Land of the Blacks" or "The Black people".
Yes, race is just like SEX. You can't live with it and you can't live without it.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 02:49 pm: |
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Kola, since we have established that we see things from a different perspective, I will tell you how I would compare the tenacity of your Afro-centricism in relationship to the world. It's like the southern culture in the American South where whites are still fighting the civil war, where they cherish their confederate flag and their glorious history. These die-hards are inured in their provincialism and they cling to the identity that restricts them. They make no allowance for the fluidity of the human condition with its natural process of change and they reject the diversity than can enrich who they are. They just continue to bellow their rebel yells and fly their confederate flag, and worship their ancestors. No body pays them much attention because they are like rocks in a flowing river, left to suffer the erosion that evitably awaits that which resists change. So, I ask, where is it carved in the stone that African Americans must pursue the destiny that you have decreed for them? Could it be that the elements of change have worn away any such message and left the stone smooth and ready for the new hieroglyphics of a different message for a different time?
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 07:47 pm: |
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Cynique,
You can call it change all you want.
But for our people (in both Africa and the AMERICAS) to sit up and become the reincarnation of their slave master....your children steadily internalizing the SAME values as the people who enslaved your parents...is what I call EXCHANGE.
I don't believe in TARZAN, Cynique. And no matter how you think of me as HISTORY....I am the FUTURE. That's why I'm here doing what I'm doing.
I see your new multicultural movement--and yes, it's far more popular than Kola Boof. But they're nothing former House Slaves in EUROPEAN DRAG.
EXCHANGE--not change, Cynique.
In order to get real Change...Africans (blacks) would first have to get RESPECT (which we have not aquired in the least). For those of us who are BLACK...nothing has changed.
I can also prophesize that having it written in a history book that you came to AMERICA bearing the Proof (nappy hair) and your skin BLACK as nightwater...and ended up looking like Arabs...will not only ETERNALLY cost you the respect of your White Master sponsors, but also the respect of your African origins. Your own American ancestors...Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, John Henrik Clarke, Fannie Lou Hamer and Toni Morrison have all made this same exact point long before I was even born.
As I keep pointing out (to TROY and now you)...
what you currently contemplate and present as some NEW revolution...is already OLD in North Africa, India, Spain, the Mediteranean, Sicily-Italy..anywhere where black people have been wiped out by this same idiotic notion that one can merely attain equality and "human fluidity"....by killing off ones own mother and father's culture...cutting off ones own nose to spite ones REAL face.
And what I really resent about your notion, Cynique...is that you call yourself a Black woman while doing it. Honestly, Cynique. You are what I keep talking about when I tell people that many socalled African Americans are not really BLACK folks but have been unfairly given that position...and more often than not, the Imitation Blacks are the ones given "education" and chosen to speak on behalf of the Real Black folks.
Why don't you just start calling yourself a "Woman of Color"--that would be more accurate--and before you come asking me who AM I to decide who is BLack and who is not--I'd like to know exactly what your Qualifications are for deciding that you are...
other than the ones your slave master set for you.
You ain't no Black woman, honey. I don't care how much you protest about "I'm jess as black as you"---the HELL YOU ARE. And that so many men and women like yourself are placed on podiums (back home in AFRICA, too!!) and ordained as SPEAKERS for Black people is also a major part of our race's destruction.
It's sort of like the Whites adoring and financing DuBOIS...but the Black masses clinging to and being emotionally and intellectually moved far more by the raw, radical Marcus Garvey. For the record--I don't consider DuBois a Black man, either, but I do take pity on the fact that he really didn't have anywhere else to belong and did at least die in West Africa (he could have chosen Libya or Morocco)...and on that count ONLY...do I claim him.
I AM A BLACK WOMAN, Cynique...you don't speak for me anymore than I speak for you. I love and want my Black babies just as much as any White woman loves and wants her White Babies. You being Mixed but having not enough numbers to create such a group---You love and want more of your Mixed babies. I understand that.
HARRY BELAFONTE is another one like you. He, who claims to LOOVE black folk but REFUSED to give birth to one...in TWO generations--not ONE--but in TWO generations, dares to speak for me and other authentic Black people....Authentic in the fact that we don't see breeding our children off the planet as fluid PROGRESS anymore than we see hanging black men from trees as progress.
And for the record--I am not opposed to one of my sons mating with a girl who isn't Black. But I am opposed to him abandoning the culture that I have created for him, not raising his child fully and completely as one of us...not teaching his child to love and respect our dark African heritage EQUALLY to his newfound OTHER. That's what I don't approve of. Black Americans are even more UN-equipped to do this than Africans are!! At least an African knows his real Clan name--has a tribe and a distinct language.
Time and change should not erode BLACK folk's humanity (their legacy for existing "as themselves" in this world) anymore than it erodes European folks humanity.
As Black Americans continue to CAMPAIGN for the THRILL of losing more of their color and their Africanness and their American "Black" Heritage with each new generation...I notice that America's 232 million Whites manage to stay WHITE. Whites are JUST AS WHITE as they were 50 years ago--Blacks are NOT just as Black. Whites still have at least 10 new films opening at the multiplex on Friday inwhich they can go and view themselves IN LOVE with other White people. Blacks cannot. I'm sure that with their numbers and the numbers of the Latinos, the Asians and everyone else...they could easily absorb the Black blood in America and remain WHITE.
What you regard as some cosmopolitan affair...I see as a total disaster. Total and irrevocable destruction to your ancestor's legacy here in America. YOU WILL NOT...recover from it.
As I told you months ago...my children will be raised up to slit the throats of your children--not because I want it that way--but because the day shall come when your white, olive and yellow progeny will try to SPIT on my black ones. Black women like me have learned much from Racism...and we are preparing our children now for the day when your brood turns into the new Arabs. In our 26,000 years of experience as a race..it hasn't failed ONCE yet. As soon as the yellows get the huge numbers...they turn against the Blacks.
Honestly....I really like you, Cynique. I admire you and think of you as a Brilliant woman's woman...but on this issue, I have already seen your people's future in North Africa. You keep thinking that you're different somehow. Good luck.
WHITE MEN have "fluidly evolved" for thousands of years also...(they just recently brought the world the internet and all manner of new technology)....BUT they have not stopped being CAUCASOIDS or stopped wanting to see their image made new in the world by giving birth to their WHITE SON...THEIR OWN IMAGE. These same White men have been ruling the world and bringing new technology...ever since they found out the strategy and STRENGTH in White supremacy---as a world Religion.
Just the fact that any son of yours, Cynique, could call himself a Black Man (as I'm sure you still allow in all your "I'm Lena Horne and I'm BLACK today" elegance) but cringe at the idea of actually giving birth to an authentic Black man...is proof positive...that your CLAIM of only seeking "the new hieroglythics" is a lie that you and your Alabama-Chicago TRIBE like to tell yourselves while you're munch'n on your Indian corn and talk'n bout how pretty hair looks when it gets wet. You have no core identity (I see that), therefore you have not taught your kids how to Make Generations (of which color has nothing to do with). Your seed will die because of it.
BUT MY CHILDREN....WILL BE HERE in America until the end of time.
As I told Troy...I AM NOT HISTORY...I AM THE FUTURE.
I am representative of those "angry black" women whose SONS will be the Fire Next time--and whose WOMBS will be the first to not bear a strange fruit.
It is time to give birth to a new King.
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Linda
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 10:49 pm: |
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Kola
I have to say that after all the insulting remarks from the posts a few months ago and the current ones now that I have many mixed feelings about your dislike for people of lighter complexions. However I also have mixed feeling about you raising your sons to slit my sons throat. Are they not brothers in the same struggle to see a black race rise up? Don't you give anybody other than your tribe credit for educating and instructing their children to be proud of who they are and to fight for equal treatment?
When you started posting here and people where buying your book and supporting your cause for all blacks to have freedom were you concerned about the color of that individuals skin? Were all the postive responses for help in lifting your voice in vain? I try to understand your anger to a degree. But what I don't understand is why you seem to think that "people of color" (as you call them)are not to be identified as black. Whites may like the lighter hues as do many blacks, for whatever reasons. And yes whites are responsible for the hues, by way of many nationalities and yes many people of color love their skin. Why shouldn't they? You love yourself, why can't they love what they see in the mirror? No choice was given to anyone in what shade they could be upon being born, regardless of what they wanted to have. You make it seem as if all people of color chose the color of skin that came attached to them. Not everyone has more mixed babies with good hair because they have it, just as not all marry light skinned individuals, nor do all people of color look down their noses or try to separate themselves from the black race. Frankly, most people of color spend a large majority of their life trying to prove their blackness to their own race. Sure,the white man laughs, he loves to conquer and divide, but individuals like yourself help him by adding insult to injury by pretending these "people of color" have no true race or place on this earth. Fortunately, my God put us here anyway-to spite individuals like you who have so much hatred in your hearts. The battle made be hard to over-come and the war will be long, but one day all the cruel and harshness will turn on those who chose not to love based on the color of skin.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 29, 2003 - 11:54 pm: |
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You say all that Linda...and then you ignore the historical facts, that once there are enough Mixed Race people in any Black nation (NOT lightskin people--but Mixed Raced people)...they separate themselves from their ties with BLACK people and they do look down on them and they do "look the other way" while mysterious new atrocities befall the Darker people.
Apparently, you have not read all the posts I made on this thread. Or you're reading parts of the posts and not Comprehending what you're reading.
Your country is just beginning to race mix. It always starts out this way. "We're just brothers and sisters...blah, blah, blah".
Since you feel that my viewpoint is so Radical, Emotional and SENSELESS...and insulting...then perhaps you should study Brazilian culture, Morocco, Libya, Egypt and especially....SUDAN's racial cultures. Especially SUDAN which is the most like America.
Please point to me a single society, Linda...where the Mixed Race people wished to have any REAL association whatsoever with BLACKS...once there was more than a few thousand of them? And how does our electing to become a Mixed Race society do anything but CONFIRM White Supremacy?
What about the Sicilians, Linda? The so called JEWS? The Arabs?...all 3 are either Hermetic (black) or Semitic (Half). What about the people of INDIA, Linda?
You're INSULTED...because you're standing in one spot (America) with your eyes closed. I Know what the hell I'm talking about, and believe me, being that I am vastly outnumbered here and sounding like a true "mean lady"......it takes enormous courage for me to speak open and honestly about what I really think and what I know. BUT IT MUST BE DONE. Things are getting out of hand. Someone has to speak up for us Black people.
You are Lightskinned "black" today--but what will you call yourself 100 years from now? And what will you call me--SISTER?
And why is your Evolution considered an improvement? Do you think Arabs are an improvement over African people?
Does it ever occur to lighter people w/Spanish-like hair that we get sick of you being considered an improvement over us just because you're closer to WHITE...and by the way....are obviously doing a lot to maintain that LIGHT status. Just look around you, Linda.
If you really think that I HATE lightskinned people...then haven't been reading my posts at all. But if LIGHTSKINNED people are going to speak for Blacks, call themselves Blacks and BENEFIT from BEING BLACK...then they need to represent BLACK people...and in fact live up to their claims on Blackness.
By the way....Cyniques comments about me and my culture being a Relic of the Past was insulting, too.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 12:11 am: |
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Linda said:
Frankly, most people of color spend a large majority of their life trying to prove their blackness to their own race.
KOLA:
Then why aren't they getting progressively Blacker with each generation instead of progressively MORE mixed, more white?
And tell me Linda...what society decided that this One Drop rule was acceptable to Black People? It wasn't us in Africa. It wasn't any folk ANYWHERE in Africa. Certainly, many people in my family back in Sudan are "lightskinned" and are still PURE AFRICAN BLACK...but they have a helluva lot more than ONE DROP.
Why can't we question WHO is Black?
Mariah Carey is not a Black woman to me--but she is to you. This woman Rosario Dawson says that she's NOT BLACK..but then all the Black filmmakers cast her as a Black woman in their films. Parts that could have gone to Real Black women.
And finally Linda...if Mariah Carey is Black. Then why do we need to BLACK? I mean..can't we all just LOOOK WHITE and be black? Then eventually...we can be JEWS and Sicilians and won't have to be BLACK at all--right? We can be like Michael Jackson.
You have no core identity to protect. I was raised before I got here...that I DO.
As I stated Linda, you are an American--that means that you can go to my home, SUDAN--and they will STAMP "WHITE" on your passport if you decided to live there. I cannot.
Do you get it at all?
Race mixing on a grand scale (as it's about to take place here in America), LINDA, has never done anything but bring misery and separation to Black People. For thousands of years.
That's all I'm telling you.
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Mr. Gulliver VanDyke
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 12:26 am: |
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Koola,
I am a White man from Zimbabwe. My family has lived there for nearly 200 years. I speak 4 bantu dialects, some Swahili and a smidgeon of Arabic.
Are you suggesting, love, that I am not just as African as you are? Haven't I got the right to call myself your brother after two hundred years?
I am a White man and yet I am African, too. What gives you and so many other Africans the right to come here and play African Queen?
I have a son and daughter by two African women. Is it your hate and not the scourge of European Imperialism that my mixed bred children shall face?
I find you to be a terrible beast of a woman, in fact. No good qualities at all, love.
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Linda
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:27 am: |
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Kola--My Sister-yes-I still consider you my sister-just my confused sister.
Again your hatred blinds you. We all have a core to protect and that is life. Whatever label you feel is placed on Black Americans who come to your homeland...the bottom line is they are still black. You can spout all the nonsense that it would be different. But if a man or woman---of dark skin comes to your homeland dressed as you, with you and accompanied by you, you expect us here in America to believe that they could stand you both side-by-side and call one white and not the other. Come on...you speak of classifaction on paper only. Your country doesn't have the exclusive right only to be called black. You say you are the future not the history--yet you dwell in the history of what once was---of the horrific culture differences you have experienced because of where you were born-you act as if all dark skinned people wish to be light--you condemn those that want to help and call you sister or brother--because you say we are not truely black. I have to wonder if you really know what being black is really about. It is not your battle to fight only to make a race recognizable but free and equal. What good is the proof or true knowledge of a clan or any of the issues you raise if you can not learn to find other measures to insure the future of your children, regardless of the color of their skin. The course of the world belongs to God only. Perhaps he wishes to have diversity in the world. I only wonder what would happen if one of your sons fathered a child of a color not suited to you. Have you the heart to destroy them or shun your grandchildren because of your idiotic outlook on the future? Are you really such a cold hearted person that you would turn away? Sometimes Kola I wonder what has made you so bitter and angry or why you wish to alienate yourself from those who wish to only embrace you. If all of your country feels this way why do any of you bother to come to America-what is the purpose-too further cause destruction to a race that is struggling to undo the harm done by Whites when we were placed in slavery. If it meant so much to your people to remain truly black why didn't anyone come and find the ones who were stolen and brought here in the first place. Were they not the warriors you claimed them to be. I know you want to find fault but perhaps through looking back your people should have tried harder to remain pure a long time ago and stop trying to return to a place that they can never return to. You can't turn back the hands of time and you can't tell me that your people don't believe in mixing. There are Sudanse men and women here in America-who are by the way classified still as black no matter what their passport says and they are marrying and producing some of these mixed children that you speak of--apparently because they believe they are white. As a matter of fact most of them prefer white companions. So please don't tell me how your people or you who also sleeps and dates out of your race(black)are trying to get back to total blackness. I will continue to have much love and respect for you for standing by your convictions, but I will not let you try as the white man has done for years to tell me who I am or what I am or how I should act, think or feel. I know I am human-a person-regardless of skin tone. I don't need a label of classification of any kind to prove that-my rising-breathing-and living is real. |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:35 am: |
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Kola, I anticipated how you would respond, and even before you wrote it down, I rejected it. I really have no problem being referred to as a "woman of color". But "black" is how other people classify me, and I have no problem with that. I am, who I am and I'm comfortable with it. |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:37 am: |
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Linda,
You just stated that Sudanese come here to America and marry White people. THIS PROVES...that you have not read any of my posts...or you skimmed them. I already wrote nearly an entire POST on the self-hatred of Sudanese Blacks, Linda. I also wrote about the Nubians, of whom there are only 100,000 left in my country.
WHERE...did I ever talk about "black warriors" (WTF?) or say that Sudanese are trying to GET PURE.
This only proves that YOU....and so many others do not read my entire posts.
Otherwise, you would not be making outrageously STUPID accusations alluding to my "HATE" and "HATRED" of lightskinned people and on and on.
And believe me, Linda. Those few Africans who come here CHOOSE to come here--usually just to mate with White people. I DID NOT choose to come here...but was adopted and brought here, so I am more representative of the poorer, MASS classes of Africans than of the wealthy, educated upper class who SEEK out Europeans in the U.S. and Europe.
But alas....the fact that you and others OBVIOUSLY don't read my posts in their entirety to begin with...says a lot about your REPLIES..none of which have addressed the subjects or the issues that I have raised.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:41 am: |
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Mr. Van Dyke,
If you are from Africa--then you know full well that in order to be considered an African by African people...you MUST BE born from an indigenous TRIBE and have a clan name.
The Black Americans are AFRICANS, because they have been born from African Tribes...and it still clearly shows.
No white person has ever been born from an indigenous TRIBE. I don't care if you've live in Africa 1,000 years. You are not an African.
And you may call me all the names you like. That won't change what you and I both know.
You wish to be my Brother? FINE. But still.
You're a White man. A Caucasoid.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:58 am: |
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Linda and EVERYONE ELSE....
Unless you've read all of my POSTS in their entirety and completely comprehended what you have read.
Apparently, Linda has not done that or she would not be making all the stupid comments to me that she has made.
And she would not be....AVOIDING.....the many facts that have so meticulously laid out to make my case against the Assimilation of the Black Americans...of which I love them enough to be completely...and IRREVOCABLY....against.
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Linda
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 03:13 am: |
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Kola
It is obvious when the heat gets going you can only try to annoy by calling names or placing blame. I have read your post and I asssure you I have no problem with comphrehension nor do I make stupid comments. I make comments you don't agree with, which is the problem as always with you. I notice you never answer questions directly...like what about your sons and their choices...those possible mixed grandchildren you might have? What ever will you do if they do as they chose and not as you say. You want to twist and turn and base your arguments on Mariah Carey and many others to make your points. You feel they are not black enough for you. What gives you the right to tell them how to embrace their blackness, no matter how little you feel they have? Have you developed your own one drop rule? But due to the fact as you stated in your post-you are un-educated and obviously can not debate without using a small percentage of statistics from the media, throwing insulting words or trying to be-little. What I have a problem with is how quickly you forget your old posts (which you should re-read) and perhaps you will understand why people have issue with you. You are the one who is raising her sons to murder another human being based on skin. No one has a problem with you believing in what you believe--it's what you want us to believe--that our children are being brought up to assmilate and produce a whole new classification of mixed lineage and forget the past. What people are learning, black, white, african, etc. is that a person has a right to love, marry and reproduce with whoever and whatever race they chose. If some people chose to want their family to erase their blackness...fine..that's their right...if someone just wants nappy headed, dark families that is fine too. But to speak of denying life because of color as you do by aborting life for reasons of color is crazy, no matter how stupid that sounds to you on your one woman mission of delivering a message from our ancestors. (Oh...excuse me...I should say...being a warrior...you are correct...you never gave your race that title...just yourself.) They may have spoken to you about keeping something alive, but I doubt if they told you to destroy their off-spring because they might come out the wrong color. It is you who feel no one remembers--you who feel that all blacks teach their children to hate black skin. Where is the credit for being responsible and allowing our children to have rights of choice? You seem to think being black can only be obtained and kept sacred by having dark skin and features that you deem correct. If the world were developed to remain the same...people the same it would have been that way. Life is not for you to control. Now, I will agree that the world is full of racial problems, and that our heritage needs to be preserved, just not by your methods of dictating to an individual who they should marry and produce with. |
Sis E
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 09:19 am: |
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Hi Everybody,
Thrilling discussions! I love it! I wonder ... would you all speak this same way -- as you're posting -- to each other if you were physically in the same room? |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:00 pm: |
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SIS E--I think it's already been proven to the whole world that Kola Boof would say EXACTLY what she's saying on this board to these same people if they were in the same room. And with my mouth, much more.
LINDA--For the life of me, I cannot relate to your lack of vision for BLACK people. With each post, you prove me right about my assessment of mixed race people. The more mixed they become...the more they sound like their Caucasoid masters. That's exactly what you sound like to me. You might as well sing WE SHALL OVERCOME (our African skin), because until you understand that MY BLACK BABIES have been the most maligned, mistreated and dehumanized children on this earth...and often times at the hands of American-thinking women like yourself...then you cannot comprehend how defensive I feel against your assertion that there's nothing wrong with breeding my children off the planet.
I am against the assimilation of the Black Americans into the wilderness of White supremacy. I am African woman who came here to leave a WRITTEN RECORD of my OBJECTION to your people's assimilation. That is my mission in America. To plant a seed against your willing destruction of your ancestors legacy.
If it comes to me fighting the Black Americans right along with the Caucasoids...then so be it. It is one thing to be called a nigger...quite another to start to looking one. And that's what's happening over here.
I am not IN AFRICA...I live here in America. I am just as responsible for the Black Americans as if I were born in NappyGrits, North Carolina!
There is nothing unique about your racial situation. This same EPIDEMIC of self-hatred and self-destruction pervades SUDAN...and increasingly...AFRICA itself.
People like yourself beam their White-worshipping music videos into the mindset of African teens and that image of White superiority is definitely becoming a DESIRE amongst African people.
But I, being raised in both Sudan and America--and having been raised by Black Americans and having lived as an adult in Tel Aviv, Egypt, Morocco and Europe....am now convinced of what I must do to save MY BLACK BABIES.
First of all, they need to be BORN. That's my job.
I have lived with a White man for five years, Linda. I loved that man. I have dated other White men, had my fun with some Arabs, some Latino-Americans...there's nothing wrong with us Blacks enjoying other races of humans...but for us to place them above our own bloodberry. TO NOT HAVE BLACK CHILDREN...how can we do that?
And how could I not choose my Black King--my man being from Belize and not Sudan--how could I not submitt and bare our seed? HE IS THE ONLY MAN THAT I HAVE EVER LOVED!!! The black one. Only him. The rest are just steppingstones.
I saw your picture, Linda, and you mean to tell me that as lightskinned as you are....you went out and had children with a Non-Black man and now you're up in here crying the blues about mean nasty Kola wanting to protect the integrity of her own children's blackness and culture?
You really think I don't have the right to question whether or not you will (ACCIDENTALLY) rear your children in an environment inwhich they just can't help but think that they are better than my chocolate Black ones?
PLEASE TELL ME...
if we Black people love Black children so much..then why aren't we having any?
And why do they have to be Mixed or look like Caucasoids in order for us to consider them HUMAN enough to be born?
Tell me how, Linda...how could a man who looks as beautiful and royal as Micheal Jordan not have a SON who looks just like him? What kind of trick is this that the White man played that Jordan's children look like their barely black mother?
Where is the KING? And why is that not important to you...BLACK as you are?
No--Sister--you will not like me. And I presume that there will be MANY others like you once I take my show on the road who will be throwing rocks and bottles. But I assure you...I AM MORE THAN A NOTION.
It's time for a change--not exchange. But serious Change. Niggers must be DESTROYED.
I came here from Africa to say one thing:
I WANT MY BLACK BABIES.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:04 pm: |
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P.S.
If your West African ancestors were here today, fresh off the boat...THEY WOULD BE on my side. Not yours.
A Black woman loves her Black babies. I don't know what your problem is. I don't care how that makes lightskinned people feel. You are called BLACK...not yellow....for a reason. I want my black babies.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:30 pm: |
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I know this is as cheap shot, but were we all in the presence of Kola, I wonder would she be wearing her wig, the one made of long, straight Caucasion-like hair. BTW, Kola I'm clueless about your "Alabama-tribe" reference. I'm from Illinois. I'm also flattered that you would compare a small-town, ex-postal worker gal like me to the elegant Ms Lena Horne. (that I really didn't get.) Could it be that you've gotten your facts wrong? Heavens to Betsy! |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:35 pm: |
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LOL
Cynique, you're hilarious.
Remember, Cynique, I'm half Arab. I have my own LONG hair.
I would love to see what wig you're talking about? What photo is there that exists with me in a wig (and esp. one made of long caucasion hair?)
Are you talking about the article about me in The Globe magazine?
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 01:58 pm: |
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ALSO...
If you were all in the presence of Kola...you would be eating delicious food (I'm an expert cook), you would be surprised at the softspoken tone of how I speak...much is lost on these boards, because everything is written...and you would not feel as attacked if you heard me speaking rather than writing cold dead print.
Also, I think I would be able to at least persuade you to UNDERSTAND why I am so passionate and fearful regarding this particular subject of our "electing" to endorse White Supremacy through intermarriage--which is all it does. Look at North Africa.
I really do love BLack Americans, because they saved my life, and I am just protective and want you to make the right choices that will empower you and not DILUTE you. It is my love for you--not my hate. I don't hate anyone, but PLENTY of people hate my race and have the upper hand.
I can only give you MY KNOWLEDGE, MY LOVE...MY PERSPECTIVE. Mines can be proved...Yours is not yet carried out, but has history to speak against it.
I love you, Cynique and Linda and everyone else here, too. I don't wish to argue with you.
But if it came to it...Cynique, Sister E, Linda and whomever else.....I would also kick all your asses if you WISHED...to take it there.
Just ask the group WHITE WOMEN WITH VOICES what happened to them when they picketed my house last summer. Oh, they got off this block in a hurry.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 02:33 pm: |
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Cynique, guess what?
I am contemplating an "eye" lift (plastic surgery) and I am currently in need of losing about 10 pounds. It's easy to lose that amount, but my problem is doing it without losing breast tissue. I had started jogging and as I slimmed down--my breasts started to sag. So I was forced to put the fat back on, and luckily,they sprang back up. I would hate to mess up my breasts, because God really blessed me in that area. Thomas loves my breasts more than my butt.
I'm also going to have liposuction on my outer hips. The kids messed up my waistline, and although my publicist publicly lists my age as 33, I'm really 35.
All of this is before I go on tour (which will happen as soon as my book comes out--which I still haven't signed a deal, although editors at Random House have been having me edit chapters). BTW--the New Black Panther party is giving me 50 guards for my events in N.Y. and Wash. D.C.
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Hartford
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 03:51 pm: |
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Miss Kola Boof,
I have heard about your shenanigans on here all the way from Hartford, Conneticut.
You're a racist, Ms. Boof, plain and simple. I cannot believe the people on this board even bother to tolerate listening to your smug, arrogant dismissal of the experiences of all human beings here on U.S. soil. We are not living in the jungle or swinging naked through trees, we are trying to have a civilized society whereby people of all races can join as one family.
You're divisive and you're very insecure. I am a 57 year old White man, I have three grandchildren who are by a Black man. I love my grandchildren and am very glad that they won't be raised with your paranoid delusions of some monolithic separation between the races.
My grandchildren are not Black or White, Miss Boof. They are Americans. They are part of the American race. Their White mother is a better mother to them than you are to your sons, because she would never be so hateful as to teach them to slit people's throats or to break the law.
If I had my way, your children would be taken away from you. You are a terrible influence if in this day and age you're still teaching them all of this African psychobable and ridiculous notions of racial purity. The world is moving forward, not backwards, whether you like it or not Miss Boof.
You wish to bare your breasts and hop around on one leg singing to the Sun, fine. But please do not imposition the rest of us with your nonsense. You're a Black Racist and a very unethical mother.
Why anyone would find you worth listening to is beyond me.
Glenn Tennison
Hartford, CT
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Claxton
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 06:11 pm: |
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I've been checking in on this particular thread since it's been running, but I haven't been compelled to speak before now. To those of you who have come to know me over the years, little of what I'm about to say right now will be of shock to you. For the rest of you, hang on.
Of all the people who post on this site, I'm probably the whitest of the black. I don't know many black people who read Tom Clancy or Arthur C. Clarke, and I know fewer who know the game of ice hockey. Having KC and the Sunshine Band in the music library isn't necessarily a strike, but I'm probably the only black person you know that can sing America's 1972 hit "A Horse With No Name". When people talk to me on the phone, they think they're talking to a white man, someone who should either be teaching college somewhere or doing play-by-play on television. And, of course, I've taken some serious flak for having the name Claxton. Yes, it's my real first name. A black woman once asked me, "What kind of white name is Claxton?". To which my response was, "It's just about as black as Wilma."
My point here is this--during my life, I've been told too many times I'm not black enough. Don't listen to the right music, don't hang out with the right people, don't mumble or slur my words when I talk, I'm not black enough. I wore that around my neck like an anchor growing up, and even once I got into college. If I weren't black enough, I thought, would I wind up being a single man the rest of my life? Yes, it was like that.
But as I got older, I began to realize that not following the peer-imposed route to blackness wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Because of the things I've learned over the years, I've become a leader in my position at work and am constantly sought after for advice and counsel. And my voice? Well, I won't be calling the Final Four for CBS Sports anytime soon, but a pretty bright woman figured out one day that the man on the other end of that voice was as black as she was. Soon, we'll celebrate three years of marriage.
I don't need anyone to define what blackness is to me. And more importantly, I consider it an honor to be part of the same group of people that has produced a host of wonderful, brilliant, and talented individuals for whom I would be humbled to carry lunchboxes.
My blackness has never held me back from anything that I ever wanted to try and do. In fact, in some cases, it's helped open the doors, and not because someone needed to fill a quota. It's because people have seen that not all blacks are suspicious or siftless, and they understand the kind of things someone like me brings to the table.
I'm not going to let my blackness get in the way of my life. And I'm not going to let anyone--least of all my own people--throw it up in my face and make it a hinderance to what I want and need to do. Being black isn't about what you wear or what you listen to or how you talk, because those things change over time. Being black is about using what you have to make your corner of the world better for everyone. |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 06:40 pm: |
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Damn, what happened to this post?
Glenn Tennison you are a racist. Your comments were degrading, disrespectful, and unacceptable! Your characterizations of Africans as backward and the US as "civilized" is disgusting. I'm talking about these comments:
"We are not living in the jungle or swinging naked through trees, we are trying to have a civilized society whereby people of all races can join as one family." and ," You wish to bare your breasts and hop around on one leg singing to the Sun, fine."
Ok, we need to "break bread," and talk about these issues, because Kola's characterization of the future is certainly possible, and i think fairly accurate. I don't agree with Kola's means or strategies, necessarily, but what we now call black is changing, as it has been. I think Kola is talking about a cultural change, which may lead to the eradication of black people. Cultures must change, but they don't have to die, and think in Kola's own way, she is fighting to maintain our African and African Diaporic cultures.
Historically speaking, "mix-raced" do separate themselves from their darker, which is often the socially debased group. It is not an issue of what Blacks people in the US call "light skinned" and "dark skinned," who still consider themselves black, but how these mix-raced place themselves in entirely different "racial" category. Now, i place "race" in quotes because there really is not such thing except the human race, yet, of course, history and man have created "race," through phenotypical differences to facilitate imperialism, political domination and wars.
Now, why does Kola think this will occur in the United States?
Well, she discussed racial mixing and she has been addressing culture and ideology. Here is my understanding of Kola's analysis, most of what i agree with:
Culturally, black americans have and are assimilating into "mainstream" US culture. Through assimilation they often discard and disregard their "African American" culture and especially, their African culture, inherently accepting US(white) notions of beauty, family, and morality, and especially the idea that racism is not relevant and that an individuals life chances are solely determined by their individual effort,otherwise known as the protestant work ethic. These cultural assumptions poltically hurt black people politically, economically, and culturally. Now, this happens to black people marrying black people. Yet, when blacks and whites marry, it is intensified. Their children are often more likely to reject their parent's culture than an assimilated child from two parented black family. Now, this is problematic, assuming that racism continues to exist.
This is what is happening. Yet, i think there will always be people that confirm their national/tribal(african american) and continental (African) culture, but this will be a minority.
The US will completely, integrate black americans, but they will not eradicate racism, nor affirm African American, African, and Caribbean culture, only in a commodifed form.
This I agree with Kola.
Kola:
I think you should make distinctions between "politically black" people and phenotyically black people, since one's phenotype does not necessarily determine their politics. I disagree with your means to an end. I do believe in the power of love, and i do think that inter-racial couples can raise children that love their cultures. Yet, I don't think it is done, because many black people don't know that they have a culture to transmit, and many of these parents, whether they're they have both black parents or just one black and one white, are already assimilated, which is why the "complexion" issue is tricky.
Hence, for me it is about cultural survival. Still, the Marking of the body, making it black, white, asian, etc..., facilitates the criminalization of the black male body and the sexualization/animalizing of the black female body, making racism seems irrelevant and placing all blame on the irresponsibility of the black community.
This is a really complex situation. Imagine and realize that most people don't read, so that all of this black literature that we enjoy, the writing style, the issues within the literature, may not be enjoyed by phenotypically black people. Who will give this literature to our children if we don't. Again, i don't agree with Kola's stategies, nor how you/she determines who is or is not black, yet these issues you/she discuss are here and we see it, we're not necessarily looking as far a Kola is nor looking at this US culture that we've been immersed in. |
Linda
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 06:45 pm: |
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Kola
Before this post becomes a battleground which stems always from your threats let me assure you that either you have no comprehension skills or assume to know individuals by pictures you see on-line.
1.Kola says: I saw your picture, Linda, and you mean to tell me that as lightskinned as you are....you went out and had children with a Non-Black man and now you're up in here crying the blues about mean nasty Kola wanting to protect the integrity of her own children's blackness and culture?
Linda says. The picture you saw is of me and nowhere does it say I had children by a non-black man...as a matter of fact both of my children have the same black father (I have never dated out of my race as you who believes in so much blackness has) who is as dark black as you or maybe even darker and yes---I love my black children because they are mine-we are black and cherish and fight for our blackness. The only difference is we don't do it with the hatred you have.
2. Kola says: You really think I don't have the right to question whether or not you will (ACCIDENTALLY) rear your children in an environment inwhich they just can't help but think that they are better than my chocolate Black ones?
Linda says: again you assume to know how my children are raised...let me say again my children love black skin theirs and their husbands and wives and children also and spend countless dollars and hours educating them to not forget the pass or their ancestors. They look down on no-one...even people who spit venum of hatred.
Kola says: Race mixing on a grand scale (as it's about to take place here in America), LINDA, has never done anything but bring misery and separation to Black People. For thousands of years.
Linda says: I don't know where you have been, but this has been going on in America long before now and not always by choice. As for misery...that subject can be debated until dooms day. Misery in this world is a combination of issues, race being just one of them.
You know Kola I really am confused at the things you say or how you evaluate some of us here on the board. You feel a need to threaten or make accusations of violence because of your anger. If we were face to face as you said, maybe the tone would be different but we would still have the same conversation. I have no fear of you or anyone else when it comes to my beliefs...as you do not. However I would be careful about thinking you would be doing the ass kicking. You are the one who wishes to deny people of color the right to be called black because of how you measure their blackness. (you know how you like to call us Lena Horne, etc and non-black) We are not your enemy--have never tried to be...we have tried to embrace you and your cause. Not everyone believes in race mixing-nor can they help how they were born...but they do try to bring up positive black children and allow then the right to chose their own paths in life. I am sure there are many black mothers who fear and never want their children to marry out of their race. I am glad mine did not--but if they had I would still love my grandchildren, ggrandchildren and gggrandchildren because I know where the seed started from and I will always try to educate them as well. So you see Kola no one here is disagreeing that race mixing is right or wrong...just a choice that some peoople make and also what some of our ancestors endured to survive. We just don't hate because of it or deny life.
Now before I leave this subject alone, perhaps you will entertain one more question...you say....I am contemplating an "eye" lift (plastic surgery) and I am currently in need of losing about 10 pounds. I'm also going to have liposuction on my outer hips. The kids messed up my waistline...
My question: are these not the same things whites have taught us black women we should do to become beautiful...why are you messing with your nature black body to create an image other than what you are and have become by producing beautiful black babies?
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 07:59 pm: |
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SIR FROM HARTFORD:
I don't take orders from you. My name is not TOBEY, so do not address me...unless you're willing and able to kill me, because NO WHITE MAN tells me what to do. EVER.
LINDA:
Regarding the plastic surgery I'm having.
My image will always be that of a beautiful Black woman's....JUST YOUNGER. All women have vanity--that's universal. Don't be silly. I want to look sexy and trim for Thomas--it's not like I'm getting a nose job or bleaching my skin. I'm just slimming down and taking the bags from under my eyes. That's not White--it's maintenance.
And nobody threatened you. Certainly not me. A question was asked by Sister E...one that carried implications all its own. I answered it.
And yes--where I come from we do have STANDARDS for deciding who is and who is not Black and we have MORE RIGHT to OUR standards than you ever will to yours. The White Man created your standard...the BLACK MAN created mines.
You might also do well to remember that I am not the one who left Troy's TOPIC and got on this one concerning Race Mixing. Cynique took it there and I followed her. No matter what issue comes up on the boards...I CAN ONLY BE...ME...
I cannot say the nice comforting things that your American ears would like to hear. Don't think that I don't want to.
And yes, I slept with White men, Arabs, Latinos---I may even MARRY one before it's all over (my loyalty, as an African woman, is to my children--NOT to Black men, because they don't have any to me). It's my Black Babies, Linda, that I care about. If the man loves us, good...if not...F 'em. But my father, before he died, asked me to choose the Black African man. I could not tolerate an African one--so I took one from Belize, a pure blooded Garifuna (which at least is West African blood stock)...that was the best I could do, Linda, but if he ever leaves me....I will find me a man and color will be NOT be an issue. My black boys are here now. That's where my loyalty rests.
You keep missing my point and thinking that I am AGAINST interracial love or thinking that just because someone isn't Black--they still can't be the same family. PLENTY of COLORED AFRICANS are not Black, Linda--but they MUST BE born from an African Tribe in order to be AFRICAN. Therefore, if an African person (like me) breeds with a WHITE and produces a child...that child is AFRICAN..but not Black. Do you see?
Black People bearing the Proof (nappy hair)...are BLACK.
I know you've been raised on your slave master's LIES for hundreds of years, but those are LIES. It's not personal. It doesn't mean that you and I aren't sisters.
You keep insisting on ONLY your AMERICAN connotations as to how we should approach this issue. There are other belief systems in the world from other Black people...whose Blackness is far more intact than yours.
I'm not the devil, Linda...I just look like her...TO YOU, because of where and how you were raised. To you...I am radical, separatist and utterly racist. But that's only because 1) you're not listening and 2) you're not respecting "MY EXPERIENCE".
You're like those nice, well-meaning white ladies who think that THEY know best for our people.
My Egyptian father was NOT black. But he was an archeologist, so he studied in great detail the history of how his family in Upper Egypt (the South of Egypt) were systematically bastardized and FORCED into Arabism by intermarriage laws (forbidding blacks to marry blacks). He wanted very desperately, Linda, to be considered a Black man and to give birth to BLACK SONS (to have sons who looked like Black men was his life's dream). This is not usual for Arabs...but my father knew the HISTORY, you see. So he wanted to make right what had gone wrong. He wanted to restore EGYPT to it's original color.
I personally hate Egypt, because I know it in a real sense and not as some Black American tourist being hugged, kissed and lied to for their tourist dollars.
I am now, legally....a Black American.
I can speak on the subject here. And I can represent what is primarily an African woman's position--which is that our people should exist "as we are".
You have NOT had race mixing in the U.S. to the degree that the White establishment is now planning for you in the future. Already...everywhere you look in the media...Black youth are being consistently sold on the idea that it's better to be MIXED or to marry a White person. New ways--but the plot stays.
THEY INTEND TO WIPE THE BLACK AMERICANS OUT via this race mixing (which IS my business)--and I am from a part of the world where I am telling you....IT CAN BE DONE. EASILY. It wouldn't take more than 200 years (which is no time) to WIPE out the Black Americans.
Once the Wipe out the Black Americans--they will wipe out Africa. They will even use YOU to sell these notions to us...these notions about why we don't HAVE TO BE black people...if we don't feel like it.
I disagree with women like Cynique and yourself on this issue...and I have noticed that darkerskinned black women in America tend to identify with my position....while the lighterskinned blacks feel more threatened and want more "racial diversity" like you. I guess it's only natural since you're not fully connected to us anymore.
Many African friends that I have...we sit around and discuss this and the Males of the group always instruct us..."The dark ones identify, because they're still African. The yellow ones are not black anymore, so they don't care about preserving black people". (Ofcourse, these same African Males who "instruct us" keep White women as mistresses and have wives back in Africa--obediently waiting for Black Massa Kang to get home).
Morehouse College Professors LOOVE Kola Boof....while BLACK Professors at Harvard University LOATHE Kola Boof and wish I would disappear.
Dark skinned working class urban folks and Black Southerners LOOOOVE and identify with Kola Boof...while many lightskinned (especially mixed race people) feel threatened and fearful of my ideals...as they obviously would not like to give up their HIGHER "yellow" STATUS in American society.
They defend that status by accusing me of being a Racist...a troublemaker.
I'd rather be a racist than be a nigger. I'll tell you that much.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 08:17 pm: |
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YUKIO
You are right. My biggest problem is that I don't have the education that would have given me the TACT to do what I must do.
I am basically a housewife who feels very strongly that I must react.
I only have my PASSION and my cleverness...my way with manipulation.
I would be more successful at getting my ideas across if I was educated by your American system of education, but I'm not.
You are right. They are misunderstanding me, because I am speaking to them like a woman with a very thick country accent.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 08:26 pm: |
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YUKIO wrote:
and the sexualization/animalizing of the black female body, making racism seems irrelevant
KOLA:
Yukio, this is why I pose topless (as traditional Zarpunni image) on the back of my books!!
It is so that 100 years from now--our great, great grandchildren who are WHITER by then and being taught that we were Savages, backwards...sexual animal-like images...they will see my bare black breasts, they will READ what a Smart woman their Black mother really was (whether she was a bitch or not--she was NOT just a sex object,etc.)...and they will do as Mari Evans said...look on me...and be RENEWED.
You made me cry, Yukio, because you are starting to see what I am saying (in my horribly harsh way). I am saying to you all:
I Love You. I want you to ALWAYS be here.
The Whites, I promise you, will ALWAYS be here. That's how it always goes, Yukio. They survive intact...and our people...fade into myth.
Please make them understand that we MUST be aware of the burning house that we are about to enter.
YES...we are a family. If we can identify our sameness...and as whites do...INSIST upon it.
Black people are ALREADY perfect. Perfectly human. There's nothing wrong with us.
We should LOOVE our children and cherish them "as they are".
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 09:23 pm: |
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Let's lighten things up,
Considering who's on this list, I was so honored to have been included:
http://www.womeninthelife.com/2002intriguing.asp
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:32 am: |
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Kola, I just wish you'd get one thing straight about me. I have never flaunted or fretted about my light skin! It was never a big thing to me. Any "entitlement" or "stigma" that accrued to me because of my skin color was at the behest of darker people who were color-conscious. They were the ones who loved or hated me because of my complexion. And, because I've always been very "hip", I never had to deal with whether I was "black enough." Moreover, skin color has never been a factor in how I, myself, judge a person. Intelligence and a good sense of humor were always my priorities. Anyway, my final take on this volatile subject is that we are all just venting. People are going to live their lives on their own terms and all of our pontificating will have very little impact. Unfortunately, nowadays, the average person is not that history-conscious, and the media has become the arbiter of what the ideal appearance is, which is something people of all colors and both sexes are going to have to deal with. C'est La Vie. |
Thumper
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 07:16 am: |
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Hello All,
My, my, how this thread has turned. But, before everybody digs into their positions and all that, let me say one thing: Nobody will be physically threatened on this board!! I don't abide by that Kola! First of all, you ain't gonna do it. Second, you look like a damn fool. Who ever heard of selling wolf tickets via cyberspace?!? JESUS B A FENCE!! What are you going to do, huh, send Linda, Cynique and others an ass whuppin' via email!? *eyebrow raised* That'll be a cute trick that I would love to see. Point being, it ain't going to happen, and I ain't tolerating physical violence in any shape or form.
Kola, while I got you, I ain't African. My mama ain't African, neither were my grandmothers nor their mothers. I have never longed to be African or felt that I have been without a culture. I have a culture. I have a history. I ain't shame the many of my ancestors were slaves. Just as I ain't shame that a few of them were the slave masters, because I am here. As Linda pointed out in one of her earlier post which you ignored is the fact that none of the Africans built a boat to come over here and take any of us back, or any armed attacks on those African slave compound trying to break any one out. Why is that I suppose? And to propose, indirectly, that our accomplishments and achievements is still tied to Africa is a joke. We are the discarded ones. We are the ones that Africa let go away from her. We rose in spite of the ultimate betrayal. Honestly, I know many Africans who have come to this country and let it slip that they can't stand us. So, you're not the first one I heard speak on it. We, AA, are considered mutts. And yet, many are over here, or can't wait to get here, smiling in our face and hating us behind our backs. The notion that I have is about the Africans that don't like American black folk is, hey, dawg, you brought your behind over here -- where I'm at. I ain't trying to go where you ran from.
But, I do give you Kola much props because you are one of the few who have the balls to state it in public.
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Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 09:58 am: |
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Thumper and others,
The disrespect among black folk, africans and african americans,african americans and caribbeans,and african and caribbeans, is legendary and it goes equally both ways. I've meant africans who just thought of african americans and caribbeans as mutts, as Thumper stated. I've met others have embraced me as a family member. It is difficult situation, because we don't know eachother, at all.
In my engagement with Kola a few months ago, i tried to address the chasm among black people, and i also tried to address it again in a thread concerning black history month, where i suggested that we begin to integrate african and caribbean history during february and our general history in high school and university curriculm. I've met africans that didn't know african americans and caribbeans endured slavery and jim crow. Yet, i met african americans that didn't know that africans endured colonialism and racism. African Americans do have their own history and culture, yet it is connected with african and caribbean history, through slavery and colonialism, as well through resistance movements by pan-africanist, and different organizations that have attempted to connect our struggles.
For example, reparations is a black struggle not an african african issues. As blacks globally, we are poor and it has much to do with slavery, jim crow, and colonialism...
Just some thoughts... |
Sis E
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 10:40 am: |
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Hi Everybody,
Well, after all of these postings, I think if you all did meet physically in one room, it better be a BBBBBBIIIIIG room. Dang!
I could see this whole discussion as a tremendous, life-changing play. It would win all of the awards -- and perhaps give us even more
insight into who we are as a people -- and who we are not. |
Sis E
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 10:42 am: |
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And, oh Claxton,
I know that song -- "Oh, I've been to the desert on a horse with no name. And it's good to be out of the storm. Cuz the devil, he will remember your name ..." or something like that. You are not alone! LOL |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:04 pm: |
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Thumper,
YOU are the one not reading. With all the praise and respect that I...and not your own....have shown to YOUR SLAVE ANCESTORS (who are also MY ANCESTORS, my bloodberry)...there is no way that you could be reading my posts.
As for threatening someone. That's bull.
First of all--I was asked a question (about whether I would say the things I was saying if these people were in my presence, physically). The way SISTER E posed the question...I took it that she was saying that if we were all in the same room--one of these SuperWomen would raise up and slap me in the mouth. NEXT...Cynique mentioned something about whether or not I would be wearing "my wig" at that meeting.
You missed a lot. I answered the question and I answered it truthfully. NOBODY made any physical threats--I answered the question that THEY asked. You left out my offer to cook everyone dinner, my offer to embrace and be kind to everyone.
ANOTHER THING...
You ignorantly blast me about how you don't have any obligations to try and know AFRICAN PEOPLE merely because some Ancient Clarence Thomas and some Ancient Ward Connerly and some Ancient Armstrong Williams.....SOLD YOU across the sea several hundred years ago. You described yourself as being "the outcasted ones"....
....but you fail to acknowledge the MILLIONS of lower class Africans back home who love Black Americans but don't have the money to come here Thumper...and express to you their ANGER about your being sold or their deep, deep feelings of loss and longing that so many Africans (PARTICULARLY AFRICAN FEMALES) feel towards Black Americans. You're really being an asshole when you don't consider that UNHEARD...oppressed group of Africans which is quite large.
Perhaps if they were women from China or from India or some other foreigners that Black Americans dote on...you'd feel more kinship.
Most Africans you meet in America...they're from the more Affluent SNOBBISH families, Thumper. And yes, many of them can't stand Black Americans. I've been telling you all...for some time...about the different African attitudes, but you all have your OWN NASTY PREJUDICE and HATE FOR AFRICAN people...so you often paint me with one brush and ignore my very obvious attempts at making a REAL, HONEST connection.
I find it pathetic how Black Americans cherish Egypt and Ethiopia (societies that mock and look down on American Blacks)....and completely ignore countries like Senegal (Where they worship the Black Americans and have a whole week set aside where Black American History is taught to their children--they even dress up as Black Americans like Harriett Tubman and Malcolm X).
What about "Slave Day" in Lagos, Nigeria, Thumper? A national holiday inwhich they mourn the Nigerians who were taken away in bondage? What about the festivals celebrating Black Americans that are held yearly in Ghana, Benin and Mali?
What about the grand deification of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali in Africa, Thumper? What about the love that White-looking AFRICAN Etta James received (to her Shock!) when she went to Africa?
What about the West African women's Spiritual Hymns (which are 400 years old!) inwhich they cry about the loss of their stolen children?
And just exactly how many Blacks were sold by Other Africans Thumper? THERE is a great debate raging between West AFricans and YOUR WHITE MAN about how accurate his claim is when pit against theirs?
What about your motherseed, Thumper, Queen TinkaTekur II of Banjul, Gambia who was executed because she so violently opposed the slave trade?
What about King Kananga's great World War that was waged against the Slave Trade?
What about the Great ASHANTI uprising against the slave trade?
You can talk about your heritage in America all you want, Thumper...but your BLOOD isn't even 10 generations out of Africa...so you're the big ass FOOL if you think that YOU AIN'T NO AFRICAN. Yes, you are!! YOU'RE ALL AFRICANS.. Some of you may not be BLACK---but your asses are AFRICANS.
You can pick your friends, THumper, but you can't pick your family.
Whether you despise us Africans or not---you're ONE OF US!! That's not a choice you get to make. And anything that happens to you...happens to us. And anything that happens to us...happens to you. You cannot call yourself a Black Man thumper and then not care about Black men being shot down in the streets of Khartoum anymore than I care about women in Dakkar and not care about the Post Office mistreating Cynique in Illinois.
We are a PEOPLE. That has been Kola Boof's point from GO.
But I'm not about to present you with a nice, comfy Aunt KoKo version of an African woman either. I'm presenting you with who I really am--warts and all.
If I didn't love African Americans, then I would not be here risking my life (as Alice Walker puts it) to go and say the things I say straight to the faces of Black Americans. It must be done, because SOMEONE has to object to their self-hate and their willingness to become extinct...which is not HONORABLE to your slave ancestors.
UNLESS YOU HAVE READ AND COMPREHENDED WHAT I HAVE SAID...please do not comment on my post. I have noticed that many people here come at me with some b.s. because they haven't fairly read what I had to say.
I have threatened no one here. I WAS THE ONE...who was threatened first.
And you forget....like you, I did not come to this country by choice. I was forced here by the Sudanese Slave trade--by Egyptian grandmother's colorism and ADOPTED and brought here.
This is why you will notice that I am so much wilder and more emotionally connected to AAs than those monied educated Africans who come here on their own.
I have a message for the Black American people--and I will be heard no matter what it takes.
ONLY DEATH...CAN KEEP ME FROM IT.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:06 pm: |
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One more TRU-ISM:
The people who sold you into slavery 400 years ago...they were sold right along with you.
They're here with you now...selling you out everyday and calling you "brother", "sister".
The selling of Black flesh by other Blacks has never stopped.
That's another issue we need to raise. AS BLACK PEOPLE UNITED...which is what THIS uppity African woman is for.
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Anonymous
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:33 pm: |
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Kola wrote:
Most Africans you meet in America...they're from the more Affluent SNOBBISH families, Thumper. And yes, many of them can't stand Black Americans. I've been telling you all...for some time...about the different African attitudes, but you all have your OWN NASTY PREJUDICE and HATE FOR AFRICAN people...so you often paint me with one brush and ignore my very obvious attempts at making a REAL, HONEST connection.
Reads like the pot is calling the kettle black.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 12:48 pm: |
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Anybody who thinks that I am putting myself on the line like this...
...because I don't love AAs and don't care about what happens to them...
IS A REAL BONAFIDE IDIOT. People who don't love you and don't care about you....they give you a fake exterior and they lie to you. They stay away from you.
I think the people here are just stubborn and let me reiterate...African Americans are notoriously prejudiced against anyone who reminds them of their awful history and the fact that they are BLACK. I grew up in America and have been treated quite atrociously as a small child by Black Americans...simply because I was "one a dem Africans".
THE POT AND THE KETTLE ARE BOTH BLACK--BOTH MAKE THE SAME STOCK.
That's my point exactly.
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Kola
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 01:00 pm: |
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Cushite King Pem wrote this hieroglythic in 345 a.d. (Meroe, Sudan):
"There is no such thing as the Past, the Present and the Future...all three...are simutaneous."
Queen Imaktmen (wife of Piahnky) wrote on her royal plate:
"We the Black ones, by flesh and by soul, have been kidnapped and placed in the ground at every corner of foreign envy."
West Africa's Queen TinkaTekur II...whom the Senegambians call "the mother of the Black Americans" made this last comment in English before being burned alive:
"I am that SHE...who walked out of the Sea....I was looking for my children...who were taken from me."
Ofcourse, your good well meaning White Family--your real family, I guess--made damn sure that you never heard of any of these people.
BUT SO HELP ME GOD...I AM COMING TO AMERICA.
NO ONE WILL STOP ME. I am on a mission.
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Sis E
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 01:18 pm: |
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So ... Sis. Kola,
Whatever happened to that book you were writing? Or could these posts become part of it? (gentle joke). |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 01:43 pm: |
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Hi Sis E,
I have a salute to Troy Johnson in my salute to black men chapter called "The Light That I Blessed".
I also mention THUMPER in both my new books. In "Diary", I just mention that I count on him for reviews. In "Virgins IN the Beehive"--one of my 3 lead characters (2 of whom are MIXED race black females)...counts on Thumper's web posts for her book choices.
BUT YES...the issues raised on this board are exactly what's been making it difficult for me to sign a book deal--Random House right now desperately wants to capitalize on my affair with Osama Bin Laden, but they are downright terrified of the other 200 pages in the book.
Which much of it is about my crusade to restore SOME African identification within the Black Americans. I am their REAL family, as I tell the White people, and nobody likes me for it, Sis. E
I catch hell from both Black and White in this country....but I have to bare my breasts and tell OUR TRUTH. I must be a motherseed and do what a mother does.
I seem insane now. 100 years from now, people will understand that I was a mother.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 02:18 pm: |
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Good Grief, Kola, it should be obvious to you by now, that as far as AAs are concerned, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. "Blacks" turn a deaf ear to your message because it is not a viable one; people want to live in the moment and get what they can out of life. You are demanding that they exchange one struggle for another. And the struggle you are so frantic for them to take up ain't that appealing. What's so great about your ambiguous agenda? If it was that inspiring, people wouldn't resist it. You wouldnt have to be hitting them over the head with your ideas, trying to make them share in your grandiose vision for a return to their obscure origins.
And, here we go again: what's with the "Cynique being mistreated by the Post Office" reference? Where did that come from? The Post Office was very good to me; if it wasn't for the good ol P.O., I wouldn't be leading a life of leisure today! Egad, is there no end to this madness! |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 02:20 pm: |
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Oooh Troy! Where are you? You started this. Are you going to finish it? LOL |
Claxton
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 05:13 pm: |
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Cynique, I hear you loud and clear...My wife works for the US Postal Service, and there are few professions as noble or as important to the national infrastructure. The mail must go through, come rain, sleet, snow, dark of night, anthrax or nuclear attack. And I do know a few people who, if they were still around after a nuclear attack, would do their level best to get whatever mail survived out.
Kola, having read your comments throughout this thread, I feel like I've watched "Roots" in its entirety all over again--which I did when I was seven years old...Although I understand where you're coming from, I also feel like I'm about to drown in it. It's enough for me to make it in this world without adding extra weight to my shoulders; I carry enough as it is. And I think that's some weight you need to set aside somewhere, too. At some point in time, holding on to all that hate and bitterness will burn you out. If you think you're facing resistance now, wait until you look in the mirror and finally figure out what you've been missing by holding onto all that. |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 06:04 pm: |
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Cynique and Claxton:
The one....and ONLY thing that I am asking Black "human beings" to do
is be Black.
Nothing more. It is not HARD to do or even tiresome.
There are two kinds of Blacks--Nilotics (the parent bloodberry) and Negroes (our offspring).
I want you to be just as naturally yourselves (racially, ethnically and by color)...as WHITE caucasoids are themselves. If you fail to do so, then you will ALWAYS be 2nd best, 2nd class to the dominant White culture. You cannot overcome racism in this country until you become who you really are.
And Cynique, you really are a huge idiot if you think...
...that what I'm asking of Blacks is even HALF as difficult and burdensome as what they're about to face in this country as Mixed Race Multiculturalists (in other words--actual niggers--without the benefit of a connection to Africa and to the Black race)....
And it's no wonder that Non-Black women like you are leading our children to damnation.
For the record--I never said that ANY incident happened with you at the Post Office. I pointed out that if some incident were to occur based on race--why wouldn't African women support you as well as Black American women?
That shows how little you actually read what you comment on.
And as far as Troy riding in on some MULE and telling mean old Kola off "for you"----you can forget it.
Troy Johnson adores me and I'm sure he likes me much better than he likes you. **Kola licks out her tongue at Cynique**
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Troy
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 06:15 pm: |
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Whoa...
I'm gonna have to print this puppy out, read it on the subway and post tomorrow.
Peace out
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brooklyn brownie
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 07:48 pm: |
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Kola Boof,
I'm a huge fan of writer bell hooks, so I find myself agreeing with a lot you have to say. Please don't let these people here convince you that there aren't many of us, especially African American women, who truly appreciate your passion and your views.
I must tell you that I never thought in a million years that I would see the day when an African woman cried out in American society--"I want my Black babies."
When you wrote that on this thread, it brought me to tears. The symbolism that you evoke is quite moving to me. Keep doing exactly what you're doing. I am raising my sons far different than how my mama raised us.
Nicole Evers, Brooklyn |
Kevin
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 08:44 pm: |
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Kola,
The fact that you live in California, which along with Seattle is the mecca for Interracial Marriages and Black Republicans, etc. might well be why your vision is so paranoid and urgent.
I did read some press reports about you turning your waterhose on White Women With Voices when they confronted you at your home. It was also in Sister 2 Sister Magazine.
I was in Southern California on business recently and I swear to god, I didn't see a single black couple. Everywhere I went the whole week, all I saw were black men with white or latina women and all the black children were obviously mixed. Sandy hair and blue eyes on a good percentage of them. When they talked, they sounded like little White kids. Whenever I ran into a sista, she was always alone and usually not smiling. When you turn on the t.v., there's also a disproportionate number of images showing mainly black youth coupled off with anything but another black.
I was stunned to learn that the city of Compton, once famous for being the home of black superstar rappers and Venus and Serena--is now a latino majority city. Black females have left California in droves--hoping to find mates in other less colorstruck regions and the general Black population is now less than 8% out there.
I was in Seattle two years ago. It was even worse!
I think you need to get out and see more of the country. You being from a very peculiar upbringing and racial experience, this is probably traumatic for you to be surrounded by a totally bi-racial culture. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this to you before.
You don't realize that not all of us are "breeding ourselves off the planet". This woman, Cynique, is probably surrounded by a black community in Illinois and therefore she can't relate to your urgent paranoia about all the black people dying off. To her, you sound like an alarmist, but being that I was just recently in L.A., I can understand your feelings.
I wish you well.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 09:47 pm: |
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Whassup Kevin,
The interracial dating you describe is a trend in all large metropolitan areas. And if anyone is responsible for black women being the outsider, it's the black brother. But since people have the right to hook up with whomever they please, then you and Kola and all the rest are fighting a losing battle. You cannot make people adhere to your self-styled solutions, you cannot dictate to people how to live their lives, especially when what Kola advocates has a history of failure. And lest you are under the impression that the very worldly Kola Boof has led a sheltered life, if we are to believe what she says about all of her amorous exploits, this is not the case. She apparently has no problem consorting with white men; she just doesn't have their babies. |
Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 09:56 pm: |
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Kola, I just read your last post. You are incredibly childish and petty. You are not the caliber of person to lead anybody toward the promised land of blackness. All I ask of you and your name-calling self is to take your pompous prosyletizing and stick it up your Sudanese butt.
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Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 01:06 am: |
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Cynique,
You've said some pretty childish things, too. I'm actually rather tired out by the exchange and really wish we could move along to some other topics.
On the issue of my consorting with White Men and men of other races, however, I'd like to really address that.
While my only real desire is a Black man...America is probably the most difficult place on earth for a Black woman (who looks Black) to meet and have a committed relationship with a Black man. This society cripples the black male with a self-hatred that is absolutely Zombie-like.
But that doesn't mean that I stop being woman. And a woman deserves to be paid attention to, given respect and hopefully...if she's a good person...LOVED. I refuse to be ALONE. Absolutely refuse.
Another thing...it's difficult to respect a man who wishes to be White. A woman's whole attraction to a man is her respect for him.
I lost my virginity to a Black American college student at Howard University. I thought I was in love with him, but he got another teen girl pregnant...and in retrospect, I realize that he also had that "color" thing going on that so many Black men have--and White men don't.
So yes, Cynique, given the circumstances....if I had a daughter....I would teach her that her loyalty belongs to her womb ONLY. YOU AND LINDA HAVE NOT LISTENED TO A WORD I SAID. I am not against interracial love or those children.
What I am against is black people producing these Tiger Woods--Vin Diesel--Mariah Carey airheads who don't bring anything of value to the common struggle and goals of our Black race.
We need to raise our children with a healthy love and respect for Blackness and the African diaspora--each of our cultures. We need to instill a great pride for our race within them.
That, I assure you, would lead to more Black men finding true love with more Black women. When we treasure our own image, we seek it out. Just as Whites do.
But yes, many Black Americans and a growing number of Africans (they have a popular fade cream on the market in Kenya now--to lighten their skin) suffer from an intense TRUST in Whiteness and White supremacy.
The way that you ignore that Cynique and PRETEND that there's nothing we can do about it reminds me of my Egyptian grandmother whose solution to my dark skin was to put me up for adoption.
The solution...is to accept ourselves....AS WE ARE.
Finally:
Black American women are constantly talking about how the White man raped us during the slave trade.
EVERY man has raped the Black woman. Every man on earth...including....the Black man.
African men have raped, mutilated and emotionally abused Black women since the dawn of time. They continue to do so today. When one tribe conquers another tribe...the first thing they do is rape the women. That's for psychological purposes--to anounce your enemies' defeat.
I'm a flesh and blood woman. I deserve to be treated like a Queen...because I treat a man like a King. I am glad that I have a wonderful, gorgeous sexy Black man who worships me and gave me two beautiful sons....but if I did not have that man...I would not settle for being ALONE.
BTW--my man is blue collar. He's an electrician and a former Navy man. There is a good chance that I will soon make much more money than he makes. So I am not a golddigger. I truly wanted someone to love and be loved by.
But I encourage Black American women to REFUSE to be alone. The world is FULL of men. There is no reason at all that a Black woman should be alone.
We outnumber Black men 8 to 1.
It's us who have slim choices, not them (as much as they lie)
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 01:57 am: |
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OK, Kola, but just remember, you can't have it both ways. You can't scorn mixed people because they are mixed, and then admonish them when they don't act black.
And, as I have repeatedly told you, I accept myself as I am.
So, have you read any good books lately? |
Kola
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 03:25 am: |
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Cynique, I haven't read any good books--because these editors at Random House have me doing so many rewrites.
They don't want me to call White women "bitches" (I have a chapter called, WHITE DOLL which ends with a poem called "Jealous of a White Bitch", because I'm sick of AA women being stereotyped as bitter and jealous of WW, I decided to tell our side of the story--I went up to some black women at the mall and had them read it and they LOVED IT! They told me, "Lady, that is what I have always wanted to say. Thank you for putting it just right").
Random House counted me calling White women "the B word" 17 times throughout the manuscript (which I don't see what the big deal is)--anyway, Random House is just livid that I could write such an unflattering essay about White women and my experiences with them all over the world. They think I'm burning a bridge with a valuable market...as if I ever cared about appealing to the right markets. Don't they realize that some of my best friends are White women?
So anyway, I had my agent send the book to a different publisher--still a major one (who I won't name, because certain AA writers have actually been writing notes to Random House telling them not to publish Kola Boof--yes, it's true, Cynique! I even imagine that Linda might have written one). Anyway, it makes no sense to publish my life story if I can't speak with my own voice and tell my own story. Of course, the book may still come from Random House--but I want my book to retain its confrontational, anything-goes attitude. I don't like to be "Liked"--you know what I'm saying?
They're also terrified about the very last line in the book--which I won't reveal here. They would like me to cut that line out, but I refuse. I don't care how it offends people, the truth needs to come out.
I think Black people (including African ones) will have very mixed emotions about the book--but will find it so fascinating, they'll just have to read it. I'm already planning an absolutely diabolical publicity campaign.
Incidentally, Cynique--did you know that in my novel "Virgins In the Beehive", 2 of my 3 lead characters are bi-racial women? January McNeil is half-white and Milagros Brown is half Mexican. Only Isis is full black. The three discover they're sisters and join forces.
I have not scorned Mixed Race people.
What I have done is complained about their annoying habit of calling themselves "black" and then failing to represent the aims, goals and overall preservation of BLACK people.
I get terribly sick of all these people who LOVE black people so much but don't want to give birth to any....and who also pimp black culture but stay as "light" and removed as they can. I feel that it's time that we let Black people represent themselves and let the OTHERS free of the terrible "burden" of it. And I just cannot bear the thought that the Black Americans may someday not exist anymore. I know as a North African that it's very, very possible and can happen in the blink of an eye.
I regard being Black and all its difficulties as a greatly beautiful journey. I am like ocean...becoming more and more of myself.
Cynique, I know I haven't given you much reason to like me...but don't forget to keep me in your prayers. There really are people in Sudan and Europe plotting my death--because of my mouth. That's why I have to leave my beliefs in print, because I probably won't live to see my kids grown.
Please understand, that I have to honor myself and my beliefs even if others don't like me.
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Cynique
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 10:26 am: |
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Kola, Kola, Kola, I don't hate you. I just engage you in these heated debates because I am an very opinionated and argumentive person. And I do answer to the name "bitch." You are an extraordinary woman and I admire that, unlike me, you at least have something that ignites the fire in your belly, something that you are dedicated to. Sadly, I am a rather jaded, disillusioned, restless person and life just doesn't seem to have any meaning for me. I have a caring husband, great kids, and beautiful grandchildren but still I ask myself daily what am I here for, what is this thing called Life, why does it seem like I'm a stranger in a strange land. Maybe I need some Prozac, huh. I am currently exploring the tenets of Nicherian Buddhism and I'll picture you safe from harm in my chanting which is really just another form of praying for you, I guess. So, now I start another day, wondering if this is death and when I die, will I begin to live. |
Yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 11:11 am: |
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Cynique,
Are you working on another novel? |
Chris Hayden
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 01:21 pm: |
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Cynique:
You probably need to write so more--maybe I need to come up to Chicago and we can get drunk and go fishing.
You got caring husband, great kids, beautiful grandchildren, good health, everything else ok? Jeez!
You just got the blues. It's natural. If writing or getting drunk and going fishing don't help, involve yourself with some of the problems of others--go do some volunteer work with some unfortuantes or just help out a relative or neighbor who is sick and shut in.
When I see somebody in a worse boat than I am that helps bring me around.
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Claxton
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 08:33 pm: |
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It's no wonder we can't get anything done as a people...Look at this thread! We've got opinions going six different ways from Sunday, and not a clue as to how to put it all together. Look at it like this:
Kola's ready to build a master race of purebread black folk that will serve as bedrock for the rest of the world.
Cynique, full of feist and fire, is battling her own set of blues and Kola at the same time. (Not a healthy combination.)
Chris Hayden--well, he's in a city with a giant, stainless steel arch they had to pour water on just to get the keystone into. (I saw the film, and it's true!)
Troy's not Thumper and vice versa. (Everybody got that straight now?!)
And I know more about envelopes and postal procedures than any man has a right to know, particularly one who doesn't work for the US Postal Service.
Now, with all that being said, we know too much, have done too much, and have been through too much to use racism as an alibi, excuse, or shield against what this world throws at us. If this thread doesn't prove it, nothing else will, people. I think that's what Troy has been trying to get us to see all along. And how, then, can we achieve anything if we're not on the same page, or at least agree to disagree civilly. Telling someone to shove it or revealing intimate details of individual sexual history doesn't count.
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Linda
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 08:46 pm: |
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Well, well, well...I take time away from the board for a few days to do some reading and writing and come back and here is my little old name being tossed around by good old Miss Kola like a dish rag ready to be discarded because it is of no more use to the owner. Let me just see if I can clarify the issue at hand for Miss Kola (one more time) who is obviousley feeling the need once again to blame someone for her problems.
First you blame me for questioning why in your heated post not so long ago you attacked light skinned individuals by saying we are non-black...you said it..I didn't...you took it somewhere else. Next I remind you of how you are raising your sons to slit throats...my fault people misunderstand you for saying that too....but you did. Next you want everyone to believe that everybody condons race-mixing...I say they have a choice...my fault again *eye brow raised.* Then you say--You really think I don't have the right to question whether or not you will (ACCIDENTALLY) rear your children in an environment in which they just can't help but think that they are better than my chocolate Black ones?--never knew where that came from--I haven't red anywhere on this board that I said I or my children think they are better than anyone and how they were raised you will never know, because they don't surround themselves with negative people. Of course I could go on and on, but I won't because this last one is the one that has me really pissed off--Kola says-"So anyway, I had my agent send the book to a different publisher--still a major one (who I won't name, because certain AA writers have actually been writing notes to Random House telling them not to publish Kola Boof--yes, it's true, Cynique! I even imagine that Linda might have written one)."
Kola, Kola, Kola...when will you ever learn that you are burning your own bridges with your comments on this board...you don't need my help. I am flattered to think that you believe I have the power to tell publishers what to do, however I don't really care that much about you or your life. Let me assure you I do not rise thinking of ways to slit your throat (pardon my pun...your words) My time is far too valuable to spend it trying to bring you down, I don't have to write letters on your behalf. Of course, unlike others on this board I peeped your hold card a longgg time ago. You stated yourself how you planned your career and your goals and to me this is just more propaganda to draw attention to you. Now, I have been patience, endured your critisims and held back on saying many things, but I will not tolerate your accusations of pettiness. Though I have much love for you as a sister, you are fasting becoming the bitch you feel you need to be for whatever reasons. And if the only way you feel you can converse is with all the idiotic and condescending BS that comes from your mind then I think you need to stop conversing with me. You are welcome to post on this site whenever you want and say what you want...just not to me. I am done with feeding your ego. I will say this once more and it is the last time. I don't like the way you put black Americans down, because you have been here long enough to know better, not everyone is trying to wipe out the black race, people have a right to choices, no matter what color they are and no one has a problem with your mission..just the way you state it. Perhaps with all the money you will be spending to over-haul your body you should go back to school, become educated, since you dwell on your lack of being un-educated and you will not have to dwell on how to get your points across in a more professional manner where others might listen to your goals. Like I said...I wrote no letters...will not be writing any letters or any other articles, reviews or blurps concerning you...I'm not that interested...I just like clarity to be able to make up my own mind on issues and have a good debate which obiviousley you can't handle. Peace Out! |
Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 01:14 am: |
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Yukio: Yes, dear, I am working on another book, - off and on.
Chris and Thaxton: I don't necessarily think that I have the "blues". I've just drifted into a introspective mode. I'm trying to figure out what Life is, trying to fathom the nature of reality, even trying to experiment with alternate states of mind and expand my consciousness. I think my "disillusionment" is actually an Existenialistic mind-set that is creeping into my psyche. I have a lot of time on my hands, and exploring new mental horizons has started to become more interesting to me than worldly things. As far back as I can remember, even as a young child, I've always found myself wondering: "Do I really exist, or am I part of a dream that an omniscient mind is having? I've also pondered the concept of time? Could it be that eternity is just a blink in the eye of this omniscient mind?? Well, I think you get the idea since you're both science fiction buffs. (Sounds like Thumper's corner has turned into Thumper's couch, doesn't it. LOL.) With summer coming, I'll be OK. |
Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 01:39 am: |
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Bless you Linda. Good luck to you.
Cynique, I hope you got my email.
Yukio, thanks for being so objective and for actually "reading" my posts.
Chris Hayden, I appreciate your comments.
Claxton, thanks and I'm very sorry.
Thumper, you should know I adore you and respect your opinion.
Thank you Nicole in Brooklyn and Kevin. Email me at kolamask@yahoo.com and I'll make sure that you receive free autographed copies of my memoirs book when it comes out next year.
Troy, thank you for creating AALBC.COM--this is a momumental and much needed gift to our community and our people--to be fed knowledge and self-love by a Black man. **You could have just sold us drugs or rap garbage or married a white lady and moved away to live selfishly...instead you continuously give our community something to think about and something to read. That's heroic in this day and age.
Well, that's all mean old evil Kola has to say on the subject. I wish we could start a new thread--new subject. Something less combative.
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Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 01:52 am: |
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One more thing.
I got a bunch of emails from Black men wanting to know why I "have" to call WW bitches and correctly stating that it's "not right".
Let me make my point:
I don't call White women bitches in my book because it's right.
I do it, because it's Necessary.
One day when I'm dead, I want younger black women to read my work and see that "this ancestor" gave them permission to call the White Goddess by the same name that I was so frequently called--usually by them.
It's time for all kinds of equality in this society. Not just the kind that black men and "bridges" like Linda can relate to.
I intend to impose my will...just as the will of others has been imposed on me...my entire Black Female life. I don't give a damn who doesn't understand or like it.
"I" LIKE IT.
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Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 02:02 am: |
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Claxton!
We didn't talk about any NEW sex.
Cynique and I only talked about old sex that happened a long time ago.
Daddy
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Chris Hayden
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 02:43 pm: |
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Claxton:
Some people would describe St. Louis as the armpit of the Universe and some wouldn't. Basically it is Munich in the 1920's without the good parts--but there's lots of trees and lawns and stuff.
Cynique-I still think you need to get drunk and go fishing.
Kola--thanx.
Claxton and Troy: I think that this thread indicates that there are as many ways of dealing with racism as there are Black people and situations, and folks have to find the method of dealing with it that fits. I don't think it is necessary or desirable for all Black folks to think alike--some people will deal with the situation by ignoring it, some by pretending it doesn't exist, some by blending in, some by going back to Africa--Sun Ra dealt with it by saying he was from Jupiter.
Different strokes for different folks, is what it is, I think. Some blacks live in areas where they will experience little or no racism (I have been in such places--it freaked me out to go into a place and be the only black there and not have everybody staring at me) others live in areas where it is fairly innocuous and benign, others live in areas where they ignore it's existence at their actual physical peril--to insist that everybody deal with it in the same way is unrealistic and foolhardy.
If a bunch of whiteguys drag you behind a pickup truck 'til you're scattered up and down the road, I don't think of it as an excuse. You may live where this might never happen to you, but some Black folks do and that's a fact. |
yukio
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 04:31 pm: |
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Chris Hayden,
Good points, practical and sagacious! |
Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 05:28 pm: |
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Chris:
Sorry, Babe, but fishin' just ain't my thing. You have to be too quiet. Booze, maybe. I'd damn sure rather sit at a bar than on a river bank. And, it's funny. Your conclusion after summing up the racism debate is so obvious. We're all intelligent enough to know that everybody has to deal with racism in their own way. What we were apparently not smart enough to realize was, that it's difficult to convert another to your point of view. |
Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 05:51 pm: |
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Chris,
I'm an expert fisherwoman. I used to get up at 3 a.m. and go with my grandma NANA to Chesapeake Bay, Norfolk, Hampton and we'd catch flounder, spot fish, baby sharks and that salty breakfast fish I can't think of the name of it.
We'd catch toads and they would pee on us! That's why I don't like toads and catfish to much, although I've recently started eating catfish. We used to go crabbing, too, which was tons of fun. I miss my NANA so much. She had the most beautiful Southern accent--all those people down there, TO ME, talk in completely poetry.
Before that, when I was a kid on the Nile, my Mahdi Pappuh and I would get up before sunrise and catch Perch, Black Eyes and sometimes drive down near the blue Nile damn and hunt croccodile or their eggs. Us being Muslims, it was illegal for a father to do this with his daughter, but Pappuh even taught me how to carve and make boats!! He always used to say, "Naima...I want you to be your own Queen."
I love fishing. U should have invited Kola. LOL
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Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 05:58 pm: |
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Chris,
It's CROAKER!! that's the salty breakfast fish!
NANA used to fry that up....get a plate and cover it with honey or molasses...then we'd sop up the honey with biscuits and chew on the croaker fish and maybe have eggs.
That's bring back such good memories. I think I'll surprise Thomas this weekend and serve him that. Although, I don't think they have croaker here on the West Coast.
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Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 02:47 am: |
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Cynique, I borrowed your words from another post. I could not resist!!
Several AA Professors keep making a comparison between myself and this woman--which I never thought was accurate at all...until I read your post.
I found this downright eerie:
Suffice to say that Ms Hurston was a very quixotic character, full of contradictions. It seems to me, a lot of what she said was designed to shock and provoke or perhaps to silence critics of her own race who chided her for being too easy on white people. Zora was, after all, an anthropologist rather than a historian. With her hands-on approach she experienced rather than analysed. To me she was more shrewd than intellectual, more instinctive than scholastic, full of home spun wisdom. And although she was a researcher, she was not necessarily an interpreter. Whites as well as many blacks found her fascinating because she lived by her own rules. So I don't know that we can evaluate her except to say that she was ahead of her time.
**I'll have to share that with Prof. Derrick Bell and some others over at Brown University and UCLA who keep comparing us. My idol has always been Alice Walker--I always expected to be compared much more with her. Other than the bisexuality, I am really very similar to Alice Walker.
I never understood when Professors compared my "cultural acting out" to Ms. Hurston's going around and measuring everybody's forehead or talking "Countrified" in front of the elite.
That's interesting. Do you know if Zora liked to cook? I love cooking.
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Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 01:16 pm: |
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Kola: As I recall, the book did mention that Zora had more than a passing interest in cooking. And the one thing I inexcusably forgot to mention about her, was that writing was her first love. |
Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 01:41 pm: |
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You know one thing I resent.
Just because two people are both Black..or both Black females...they are always compared or expected to be "the new so and so".
Why can't Kola be called the new Sylvia Plath or Cynique be the new "Iris Murdock"???
Personally, I feel that by being compared to icons like Zora and others--it sets up an unfair level of greatness that is just too much for a person to compete with. I can never live up to it and this is where I find it a negative thing.
As much as I love these women, I think there can only be one, really.
To me, there'll never be another Zora, another Aretha, another Diana Ross, another Joan Crawford.
I honestly see myself as much more like Gayl Jones than any other writer--and as a personality--more like Alice Walker (pagan-womanist). But notice how neither is as Afrocentric as I suppose I'm considered. Do you agree Cyqnique? That people tend to do these comparisons too much and not give newness credit?
I notice this as an American thing, especially. Americans love to recycle any and everything that was a success in the past. They resist new things.
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Chris Hayden
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 02:17 pm: |
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Kola:
Sorry I left you out. Some time maybe we can get together and go fishing.
As to you being the new Sylvia Plath--maybe we should say she is the Old Kola Boof!
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Yukio
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 02:43 pm: |
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Cynique,
"What we were apparently not smart enough to realize was, that it's difficult to convert another to your point of view."
This is indeed a problem with these threads. I'm not a fan of conversion and don't practice it. Perhaps, unfortunately, we need to state that first, so that things don't get out of hand. Conversion is not my method. Engagement is, however. Debate is really about discussing and engaging in order to persuade, i think, while discourse, which is what i try to do, is purely about engaging ideas and theories. The former lends to the devices of right and wrong, which often leads to a "proletizing"(sp) effect. Btw, these are my own feelings on the concepts "debate" and "discourse," as learned through praxis rather than the dictionary's definition. |
Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 03:40 pm: |
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Yukio: I agree with you comments; easy to do because they were true. Kola and Chris: Comparing one artist to another is a 2-edged sword. It can be flattering but it can also be stifling. And when whites compare blacks to whites, they tend to take on a condescending posture. I am reminded at the way Spike Lee always bristled at being called the "Black Woody Allen." He apparently thought this compromised his identity, and that Woody Allen could've just as easily be referred to as the "White Spike Lee". Being compared to another person kinda robs you of your uniqueness. |
Claxton
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 10:09 pm: |
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Chris, I've never been to St. Louis, but I've always wanted to visit...Having a background in civil engineering, the Gateway Arch would definitely pique my interest. And I love sports, so watching the Blues, Cards and Rams would be on the list of things to do. And no trip to St. Louis would be complete without a visit to the National Bowling Hall of Fame...Yep, I bowl, but not as often as I used to...My wife is a good bowler, beats me at it regularly, too. But that doesn't stop me from doing my level best at it. I don't do fish, though, particularly not catching them...I'll leave that to more experienced hands...
Kola, I know you were talking about old sex...Even among friends, there is such a thing as too much information...
BTW, I'm still waiting on a black equivalent of Irwin Allen. Forget Woody Allen; he probably wouldn't know a firecracker from a fireman. My man Irwin, though, he made some good disaster films. "The Towering Inferno" remains one of my favorite movies to this day, and neither "The Poseidon Adventure" nor "The Swarm" are anything to sneeze at.
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Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 12:11 am: |
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Well no one responded to my thread, I suppose to hurt my feelings.
So I'll just post the article here to make sure it gets noticed.
GREGORY KANE: Arabs and blacks are not kindred souls
2003/03/26 10:51 PM EDT
By Gregory Kane
For some African Americans, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is our brown, Third World brother fighting against the forces of racism and white supremacy, manifested by President Bush and crew. That view belies the truth: for years, perhaps centuries, Arabs in the Middle East and Africa have had a white supremacy agenda of their own.
Sunni M. Khalid is an African American journalist and Muslim who’s lived in Egypt and traveled extensively in the Middle East. He’s commented on the situation there and pulls punches about as often as his boxing hero, Joe Frazier, did – which is to say not at all.
Seven years ago he found himself on assignment in Iraq when he noticed that the principal of a Baghdad elementary school looked just like his aunt back home in Detroit. After noticing other Iraqis who might be considered black here in the states, Khalid asked from whence they hailed.
Most said they came from Basra, a town in southern Iraq. Africans got to Basra in pretty much the same way they arrived in the Americas: on slave ships.
“Basra was the entrepot for Africans who were enslaved by the Arabs,” Khalid said last week. He estimates that 10 to 15 percent of Iraq’s population is Afro-Arab, but you’d never know it to look at Hussein’s inner circle of advisors and leaders. Are there any? The question was put to Khalid.
“Not at all,” he said. Iraqi Afro-Arabs, according to Khalid, “have been marginalized like all the other people of African descent in the Arab world. The treatment that Africans have historically received at the hands of Arabs is not very good, especially in the last 30 years.”
Our “brown Third World brothers” in Arab countries haven’t got a thing on Bush and Co. in the white supremacy department. Khalid remembers living in Cairo and talking to Muslims from sub-Saharan African countries. “They told me they were stoned, harassed and mistreated on the streets of Cairo everyday,” Khalid recalled. “They told me they were Muslims in spite of the Arabs, not because of the Arabs.”
Khalid’s wife is a dark-skinned Somali woman. He remembers the glares he got from Arab women when he took his wife to dinner. (Khalid is a caramel-colored African American who looks Arab in the Middle East.) One woman even asked how he could shame himself by being seen with such a woman.
Similar incidents occurred when his wife went grocery shopping. Lighter-skinned women would cut ahead of her in line, a practice Mrs.. Khalid ended quickly. Khalid’s stepfather, a Nubian, was in line at a bank one day when a light-skinned Arab walked up beside him and was immediately waited on by the teller. “I’ve been going through this my whole life,” he told Khalid afterwards. White Europeans received more deference and better treatment from Arabs than darker Afro-Arabs do, Khalid said.
“A lot of African American Muslims don’t want to deal with that,” Khalid said. There is racism in the Arab world directed against black people.”
It is a racism that closely parallels that practiced against blacks in this country. Most, if not all, African Americans have had similar run-ins with racism, or know someone else who has. While America’s white media are often chided by African Americans for ignoring stories important to blacks, Khalid noticed the same thing in the Arab world.
“You can pick up any newspaper in Egypt and there will not be one word about the Arab treatment of, and genocide against, Africans in the Sudan,” Khalid said.
So bash Bush for starting what you may consider an unjust war if you must, but spare me the notion that Hussein or any other Arab is a Third World brown brother.
The history just doesn’t support the notion.
Gregory Kane is an award-winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun. In 1997 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on slavery in the Sudan. That work won him the 1997 Overseas Press Club Awar
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Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 12:03 pm: |
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Well, Kola, I for one never had any reason to doubt what you said about Arabs being racist. I was not aware that there was a wide-spread feeling among African Americans that Arabs were their brothers. In fact, with the proliferation of Arab mechants in the inner cities, a lot of friction came into play between these 2 groups because of the way Arab store owners exploited and disrespected blacks. Not to mention the Arab cab drivers who pass up blacks customers.
If anybody embraced the Arabs it was the Afro-centric people who changed their names and converted to Islam. |
Kola
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 01:25 pm: |
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Cynique said:
If anybody embraced the Arabs it was the Afro-centric people who changed their names and converted to Islam.
Kola:
That is so true, Cynique. So true. But I mainly want Linda to realize how WRONG her comments were when she said that she and I could go back to my country and that we would both we seen as "Black people"--regardless of WHITE being stamped on her passport. The middle east is an entirely, totally different world than the U.S. Linda would not be considered a Black woman in my country and because she's an American--the Arabs would proclaim her "sister" and wine her and dine her and convince her that Allah has smiled on her.
When I was a child in school in Sudan...we were taught by our teachers that those of us who were "brown" or darker were "cursed" and inferior--Africans were "part animal", backwards, obsolete. THOSE were the exact words our faqui (teacher) used. We were taught that yellow people and lighter were more pleasing to Allah's eyes and that Allah loved them more. In every facet of society...blacks were (and are) expected to defer to the lighter Arab people. Their lightskinned children are treated at the Hospital before a Black child. Black women are sterilized; Black men locked in jails or killed for the most bizzare reasons. AND IN THE LAST 20 YEARS...actual slavery (black people sell for $14 a piece). As Colin Powell said--there is a holocaust in Sudan (he's the one who started the petition that got Congress to raise the Sudan Peace Act--although it hasn't really helped). Two million black Africans have been murdered in Sudan in the last 3 years.
YUKIO is fond of saying that there is no actual race..but the human race.
And yet this Arab race...is the bastard child of the Ethiopian and Sudanese Slave Woman from Biblical days!! Our own blood!! Enslaving us and treating us like animals.
Cynique--they even KNOW that they are the children of Africans. They KNOW IT and they still mutilate their own mother.
This is what I was trying to get Linda to see when I said that my children would slit your children's throat....this is what I understood your goal to be...to produce a "new race" of mixed people to mistreat and abuse Black people just like they always have once they get their numbers in the millions. They can't help it Cynique. Once you're closer to the White man...your first impulse is to destroy all those who are evidence that you aren't "entirely" white. We lost Egypt, we lost the Moors, we lost Libya and now they're Ethnic-Cleansing SUDAN just as Cleopatra did with her "intermarriage laws" that ended black rule on the Nile.
You and Linda...should please not be angry with me when I try to warn you that this multi-culturalism is only a rouse to kill off blacks. Always has been.
I did not mean her or your children literally when I spoke of throats cut. I was addressing the danger of Black Americans making the same mistake that their African mother has made.
None of our White children...Caucasoid nor Arab...have respected our humanity as Blacks. This is what I am trying to WARN the Black Americans to make your decisions about "assimilation" very carefully. It is better...to be BLACK. That's the best you can be. That's what your ancestors would have wanted, because if you lose your color, then the Whites will have won. They will have destroyed you then just as they destroyed the American Indians.
No one has EVER respected a Black man holding a White baby.
The Black Americans must realize this. Your greatest moment...when the whole world respected your people...was in the 1960's when you stood tall and proud as the children of your ancestors. As Black men and women with African hair.
You should teach your children to embrace their true African identity and not seek the Caucasoids. ALL BLACK PEOPLE, Cynique, no matter where they are....are AFRICANS. That is your identity no matter where you go....even if you aren't a black woman...you're still an African. I saw your picture. You have a Fulani forehead, a Ga jawline, a Fulani-Denkinyira shaped head. Linda has a straight up Mende crossbow (shoulder symmetry and head shape). Both your behinds are West African negroids.
If you give that away...then it gives the Whites a victory over your ancestors.
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Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:21 pm: |
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Well, Kola, I think you underestimate the strength of black blood. You seem to think the white blood dilutes black blood but you never consider that black blood dilutes white blood. Black genes are just as strong as white ones when it comes to passing along racial traits. What you also won't acknowledge is that African Americans are a new breed who have white ancestors as well of black ones; they also have a unique culture indigenous to their tenure in this country. This just does not seem to register with you. Others have mounted the same crusade you're advancing and garnered meager success because what is important to you is apparently not a priority to Blacks in America. Who is to say who is right????My final word on this subject is that the human species evolves for whatever reason. Time brings change. |
Troy
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 05:10 pm: |
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I just printed out (all 79 pages) and read this entire thread. My very first comments is:
Please start a new thread when you bringing up a new topic.
Kola you were correct in starting a new thread for the article, just give folks a chance to reply. I read the article myself but if would have taken me a few days to reply.
Cynique. You wrote something near the middle of this thread that I thought was really nice -- especially coming of the top of your head.
"These die-hards are inured in their provincialism and they cling to the identity that restricts them. They make no allowance for the fluidity of the human condition with its natural process of change and they reject the diversity than can enrich who they are. They just continue to bellow their rebel yells and fly their confederate flag, and worship their ancestors. No body pays them much attention because they are like rocks in a flowing river, left to suffer the erosion that evitably awaits that which resists change."
Kola: about 11 years ago I heard Dr. John Henrik Clarke (http://authors.aalbc.com/john1.htm) describe Arabs in almost the same fashion you did
"Arab race...is the bastard child of the Ethiopian and Sudanese Slave Woman from Biblical days!! Our own blood!! Enslaving us and treating us like animals."
At the time, I though the statement was extreme however recognizing that Clarke had studied history for twice as many years as I was old at that time. I also knew Clarke had more information on the subject than I would probably ever have. I was more content to listen and hear what the man had to say before making a judgment.
I never took your "slit the throats of your children" statements literally. However I can understand why other people might.
Metaphors, sarcasm, even bluntness don't play well on discussion boards when people don't know each other well. Even if people know each other well there is opportunity for miscommunication. I'm not saying change the way you write, I'm just saying there more opportunity for miscommunication with your style. I believe you are correct when you say people would perceive you differently in person or if they could hear you. I listened to a portion of your live radio broadcast a few months back it was helpful to understand your writing. For example you described how our "children" left Africa and when the returned after becoming "white" we were frightened... I paraphrase but you described it much more poetic, it was told like a fable almost -- but if was founded in scientific fact.
I agree with Cynique regarding the strength of Black Blood. From a genetic standpoint, despite their majority in the United States, I think (read: I'm talking off the top of my head and I don't have a scientific study in front of me to support what I'm saying but I believe it to be true, and I'll try to find something to support this position when I get a minute) that your blond haired blue eyed people are far more at risk of being wiped out that the darker skinned peoples of the Earth.
Chris, I almost forgot we had a challenge going in this thread. In reality I really should have taken that challenge to another thread. I don't even adhere to my own admonitions (smile). Yeah, I have to admit you did get me with that bit about my parenting ability that's almost like talking about my mother or something (smile). Where were we 3 for me 0 for you.
Hey y'all start some new threads and break out some of these discussions for clarity. Besides this thread is over 400K in size (for you non-techies this is a really BIG web page), people with modems will have difficultly pulling this thread up. |
BlackNubianEmpire
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 08:17 pm: |
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Great discussion. Lets begin by saying that the barbarian, nomadic Semite out of his envy, his barbaric nature and his belief in his own Gods decided to begin the degredation of the Black race when they invaded Egypt during the Hyksos period. The Amelekites, Hebrews and other Semites were defeated after about two hundred years in Egypt, however, they were unable to have the type of impact that the "Aryans" had in destroying and enslaving Black Naga India. That system of racism continues today (see "A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming," pub. by Xlibris)
The history of Africans, Africoids and Black people in the Americas is a very complicated one. Today we are 100 percent certain that there are at least four periods for the establishment of Black culture in all of the Americas.
1. Prehistoric/Proto history as early as 75,000 years ago (Calico, California skeletal ds, Skeletal finds in North-East Brazil appear Negroid)
2. Brazilian skeletons showing Negro/South Pacific afinities,30,000 BC (read Scientific American, National Geographic)
3. The arrival of Africans from Sudan, Egypt, West Africa with cultural and racial characteristics still found in Africa today, such as facial scarification, keloid tatoo, lip plugs, headdresses, hair style, and more. Legend places that contact from 3113 BC to 1492 AD.
Blacks have and are responsible for the creation of great cultre and civilization in the Mississippi Valley in ancient times, in Mexico among the Mende-Shi or Olmecs, the Mandinka/Caracole and others in the Middle Ages.
During slavery, the forth period of African contact with America began in a negative way.
During the fifties to sixties due to the efforts of Black Americans, Africans from Africa, Asians and Latins benefitted from the Civil Rights Act, because all barriers against Asian, Hispanic and African immigratiion to the US was lessened. Then a new group of Africans arrived in the US. They were like the Asians more educated, had the money to come here and were able to move up.
Yet, when you compare African-Americans in the sixties and before to some Indians in India, some Asians in the boatpeople and slum colonies of China, or to Japanese in the crowded places in Tokyo, or Latins in slum regions of Mexico or elsewhere, or the poor ghettos of Europe...BLACKS ARE MANY TIMES AT A HIGHER LEVEL AND HAVE BEEN SINCE SLAVERY WAS ABOLISHED (want the proof, read the stats from the book, "A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming," pub. by Xlibris.com www.xlibris.com
TAKE THE CALIFORNIA TEST AND THE MALE IQ TEST
http://community.webtv.net/nubianem2
As for India, South Arabia, South East Asia, Indonesia, South China, Japan, Melanesia, the Black presence in these lands in prehistoric times to this very day is a fact. (See "A History of the African-Olmecs," pub. by 1stbooks Library, also see "Susu Economics," pub. by 1stbooks Library.
At present, the Black race is going through a RENAISSANCE on a global scale. That is the nature of things and nothing can stop it. I happen to belong to the African system of religions and we believe that events happen in cycles. The African Period is at hand and this is the time similar to the 18th Dynasty or the Age of Leo. Hence, I shan't waste my time bending my head to racists, I shall instead encourage Black World Nationalism and pride and the removal and Africanization of all African lands, especially in Northern Africa, the removal of all Semitic religions that degrade us, and the rejection of racist supremacy of all kinds. At the same time, its our duty to do what is required to return to the top.
Nubianem@yahoo.com
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
http://community.webtv.net/nubianem
The percentage of African-Americans (North, South, Central America and Caribbean) of Sudanese-Ethiopian-East African origins is about 20 percent. West African is about 50 percent. Kongo/Angola is about 30 percent.
For more on African genetic traces and ancestry check www.africanancestry.com
Who invented racism and who contributed to the destruction of Black Civilization in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere? Read, "A History of Racism and Terrotism, Rebellion and Overcoming," pub. by www.xlibris.com also at www.barnesandnoble.com see previews also at http://community.webtv.net/nubianem
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Let's Get Real
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 12, 2003 - 04:05 pm: |
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BlackNubianEmpire:
What you say is more about rhetoric than reality. I fail to see any signs of a renassiance here in America, especially among the black underclass which embraces the "highly-vaunted hip hop culture". This segment continue to worship false values and perpetuate a lifestyle that is degrading to women in particular and the race in general. Africa doesn't seem to be on the rise either, but is instead bogged down with poverty and the plague of AIDS. |
yukio
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 08:58 am: |
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Let's Get Real:
How do you come to the points you make? Where is it evidenced that the "black underclass" embraces hip hop culture? BTW, what is hip hop culture to you? |
LGR
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, November 13, 2003 - 11:43 am: |
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Hip-Hop is interchangeable with the the Rap lifestyle ghettoites are so obviously enamoured with. True, the affinity for this violent, bling-bling culture is not limited to just the inner city. |
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