< Two Evils

two evilsOver the last eight years a new crop of so called “enlightened” Black people are starting to emerge, the “politically enlightened” that is. These people are the ones that got into politics when Barack Obama first ran for president, but really weren’t into politics, they we’re just into wanting to see Barack become the first Black POTUS. They’re mostly under 35 and are a part of the millennial generation that came of age after the internet became a household thing. They’re part of the microwave, short attention span, self entitled, Twitter generation that thinks things should happen specifically for them and immediately after they say something about it.

This generation of Black people has jumped into social media politics head first with little to no understanding of how politics actually work. They think that because they have an opinion and that there are other people that share that opinion, that they are right about what they think and that anyone that disagrees is wrong. This is the furthest thing from the truth, and it’s the epitome of confirmation bias! But never the less, it’s the lay of the social media landscape.

These social media politico’s have usurped true political debate and replaced it with a millennial mindset which is becoming a detriment to the Black political voice that we once shared. At one point we spoke with one voice politically, but over the past eight years, that voice is being chipped away little by little, election by election. And each election cycle we see more and more Republicans being voted into office who seek to destroy all the progress that our forefathers gained after the Civil Rights Movement. And each time we see more and more black people either no voting, or voting across party lines based off of a flawed but prevalent thought pattern among these voters.

The three things that are causing this is; no real understanding of politics, the “what have you done for me lately” philosophy has been condensed because of their short attention spans, and they don’t understand the lesser of two evils philosophy.

When these three things occur within a person we get what we see today and this group of people are getting larger and larger each election cycle.

1: No real understanding of politics means that you are looking at political parties through a black and white mentality, both racially and as opposites of the same paradigm. So what happens is race is applied to everything along with political party affiliations, which means that they are specifically searching for what each party has done for Black people.

2: Add the microwave mentality to that and these short attention span social media politico’s apply their minuscule understanding of politics, and racial biases with the what have you done for me lately mentality and deduce the Democrat party down to within the last election cycle, as a matter of fact, they break it down to the latest news cycle stories that are being ran day in and day out trying to convince you of this, or that.

I’ve seen so many Black people mention what have they done for me lately when talking about politics than I’ve ever seen in my entire life over the past few years and it shows that they have no actual working knowledge of politics before they became “activist” on different social media platforms. And whats really crazy is that the people responsible for starting this dialog and spreading it are none other than Fox news pundits and reporters. Ask yourself what their agenda is? For those that can’t figure it out, its to divide and conquer.

Republicans only win statewide elections when there is a low voter turnout, or Black voters either no-vote or cross party lines. Whats one of the best ways to achieve these results, convince Black voters that the other party hasn’t done anything for them lately, therefore why would you continue to show allegiance to the party.

3: Because they don’t truly understand the lesser of two evils philosophy, they either no-vote or cross party lines based off election promises, which are mostly pandering. Within the last 100 years, the Republican party has been against every social change that has helped Black people in America. They’ve stood in opposition of Civil Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity acts and Affirmative Action, voter registration, etc. So how can a political party trumpet what have they done for you lately, when they’ve never done anything at all for you period, yet a lot of y’all actual listen to this nonsense and show that you believe it by no-voting or crossing party lines! This is where a true understanding of the lesser of two evils philosophy would come in handy.

The lesser of two evils means that if you have to make a choice between two things, could be more than two things, you should choose the one that is the least bad for you!

So in the instance of a two party political system like the one set up now, you should pick the one that does the least harm to you. This doesn’t mean that you’re voting for evil people, evil is just a metaphor, you’re voting for the person or party that will do the least amount of harm to your position in this country.

Now with that said, which party has stood with Black people for over a century, and which has been in opposition to the progress of Black people, at every turn. Which party is actively trying to get rid of affirmative action? Which party has trampled on voting rights across the country? And the list can go on and on, but you get the picture right?

So all in all Democrats may not be actively trying to court the Black vote by making empty promises during the election cycle, but they have tried to beat back the Republican progress by regress machine that’s been in full effect over the past three decades and that has gotten worse since President Obama has taken office.

At the end of the day, if you’re one of these people that has no-voted or crossed party lines because the Democrats have done nothing for you lately, or they’re the lesser of the two evils, and you don’t vote like that, you are the reason that Republicans who have never done anything for you are able to win elections. So when they go on to dismantle the hard fought legislation that our forefathers died for, I’m going to need you to STFU and take what’s coming to you. All you gotta do is look at what Rauner is doing in Illinois!

 

 

 

The Jury Ain’t That Grand

scalesSo here’s the thing, the media has conditioned us over the years to believe that a grand jury is the epitome of justice. They make it seem as if they hold value intrinsic to equalizing the deployment of justice when justice may go un-served, but the reality of the situation is that it’s just as flawed as the justice system is.

It takes the same biased people that would serve on a transparent jury and asks them to figure out if a person should be charged with a certain crime, but with no transparency.

Like all other things in a racially biased society like the one that we live in, those types of biases seep into every aspect of our system. From hiring practices (Google racism in hiring practices or black sounding name biases), to loans for houses (Google racial bias in subprime loans), to Redlining (Google the term redlining), read The New Jim Crow so that you better understand the racist practices behind mass incarceration, and so on.

What you’ll realize is that racist people control all these institutions therefore they are proliferated with racist thought and biased outcomes, the grand jury is no different than an all white jury of your so-called peers.

As a matter of fact, its even worse, because the defendant doesn’t even get a chance to present his/her side of the story, it’s just the prosecutor in the vast majority of the cases presenting them with the evidence that they feel is good enough to bring a case to trial. It sounds good on the surface, but when you add the fact that the prosecutor has a racial bias, and the grand jury participants have a racial bias, how exactly do we expect the outcome to be non-biased!?

We been conditioned to believe that a “jury” of our “peers” is the perfect way to deliver justice, that the outcome of every single case is in the hands of people that only listen to what the law says and don’t bring any of their biases into the courtroom with them, but the truth of the matter is that it’s almost impossible to check your biases at the door and its been proven time and time again when we see grand juries refusing to indict racist police officers, that murder unarmed Black men, women and children, with the latest being Tamir Rice. A young Black child playing with a pellet gun, who was gunned down within seconds of police officers arriving on the scene. Yet we’ve witnessed grown white men that have engaged with shoot outs with the police being taken into custody alive. How do we quantify that with reason and logic, if justice is supposed to blind and harbor no racial bias? How do we rationalize the fact that a police officer was caught on tape administering a banned maneuver; banned by the police and governmental body, the chokehold, but a grand jury felt that it was a justifiable act?

The law stated that police officers were never supposed to use the chokehold when trying to apprehend a suspect, yet a grand jury sat in a room and came to the conclusion that it was ok and justifiable for the officer to use it on a Black man (Eric Garner) that was panhandling cigarettes! How exactly do we rationalize that a police officer broke the LAW in doing what he did; yet it’s viewed as a justifiable offense, unless racial bias is brought into the picture.

Once you add racism, then it all makes sense, it makes sense that a racist would view a big Black man as a threat!

It makes sense that a Black kid with a pellet gun is a cold-blooded killer just waiting to kill someone, if I’m viewing him through racist eyes!

It makes sense that a Black man (John Crawford) walking through a store that sells toy guns is immediately shot by police officers without them checking to see if the gun was real or fake if we add the fact that the officers who shot him were racially biased or flat out racist!

This is the only way that any of these things can make any sense, period!

I can go on and on saying what makes sense but I hope that you get the picture!

And the reality of the situation is that, a group of white individuals sitting in a room where there is no transparency at all, who harbor racial biases, will in most cases see nothing wrong with a police officer, who has supposedly been sworn “to protect the people and the law” killing and unarmed Black man, woman or child.

At every turn of events we are reminded of this!

I believe that if we continue to use Grand Jury’s they need to be transparent, ALL the testimony MUST be available to the public!

The reason why they claim that they are not made public is for the safety of the witnesses that come forward, but the reality of the situation is that they can at anytime redact the names of the witnesses that testified as well as the names of the grand jury members, therefore making the safety argument moot!

They make them private and allow the prosecutor to have free reign because they know that any half way competent prosecutor will be able to convince a grand jury that a prosecutable crime has been committed, as long as there is no defense present and they actually want to bring a case to court. If they don’t want to actually prosecute, the grand jury will almost always come back with no indictment!

It’s playing out right in front of our eyes right now, for the world to see!

 

Still Serve and Protect!

Over the past few years I’ve heard an echo growing stronger and getting louder every time a Black man is shot by a police officer, and its not what you think. It’s not #HandsUpDontShoot, it’s not #JusticeOrElse, and it’s not #BlackLivesMatter, it’s “if we don’t stop killing each other, they wont stop killing us”!

This disturbing trend is becoming more and more commonplace on social media sites every time a Black man is murdered by a cowardice piece of shit racist cop. Every comment thread will have some racist white person saying he got what he deserved and a bunch of ass backward negro’s saying that if we don’t respect ourselves why should they respect us.

Well for one, it’s their job! They’re supposed to Protect and Serve the public; nowhere in their job description states that they need to RESPECT us first. Nowhere in their job description states that they are the judge, jury, and executioner. But it does state that they are supposed to apprehend suspects and let the prosecutors present a case where the jury determines if they’re guilty.

They are supposed to respect the law, and if they do that they’ll never kill someone that is not trying to kill them first! And the incidences that bring about anger and protest are the ones that are clearly known to be police acting as the judge, jury and executioners.

But what’s strange about this is that this usually only plays out when the murdered individual is Black! We rarely ever see a white cop playing all the roles when it comes down to a white individual, for some odd reason they RESPECT the law and lives when the person looks like them. Over 80% of all white people that are murdered are murdered by other white people! They kill each other all the time, but we never see white people saying that cops wont respect white lives as long as white people don’t respect white lives.Screen Shot 2015-11-27 at 9.28.49 PM

Why do you think that is?

Well I’ll tell you, its because even though white people kill each other all the time, those same white cops still RESPECT white lives, its evident because they don’t kill white people at the same rate that they kill Black people! So us respecting ourselves, and Black on Black crime has nothing at all to do with why some cops don’t RESPECT our lives!

They don’t respect our lives because they are racist and they believe that a Black life is not as valuable as a white life, plain and simple! It’s been like that since we were stolen from our homeland and shipped around the world as slaves! There’s no way we can change that by RESPECTING ourselves! As long as there are racist who infiltrate police departments, it doesn’t matter what we do, they’ll continue to kill us if they can keep getting away with it.

There’s been no time in our history where our RESPECT for one another stopped racist white people/cops from killing us. They simply don’t care about that, they just hate Black people and when given a chance to harm one they will, especially when they can hide behind a badge and the “fear for their lives”. And as I said the only way they will stop doing it is if they are held accountable, and even then some will still do it!

WHAT WE NEED TO DO IS STAY VIGILANT IN EXPOSING THEM; KEEP OUR CAMERAS POINTED AT THEM AND NEVER ACCEPT THE OFFICIAL STORY!

DEMAND THAT ALL EVIDENCE BECOME AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC!

DEMAND THAT ALL COPS WEAR BODY CAMS!

DEMAND THAT ANY OFFICER CAUGHT CUTTING OFF A BODY CAM DURING AN INCIDENT BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY!

DEMAND THAT A FEDERAL LAW BE PASSED SO THAT EVERY PERSON IN THE U.S. KNOWS THAT IT IS LEGAL TO RECORD POLICE OFFICERS AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT IMPEDING ON THE SCENE, AND REMAIN AT A SAFE DISTANCE!

African + American =

For some time I’ve considered writing a post about this but never found the motivation to actually sit down and start writing, but the other day after addressing a post on Facebook and getting the typical response from so called “conscious” black dudes, I decided to finally pen this post.

So here’s the thing, Black people in this Country, the United States of America, have no true identity! We are the homeless, we are the disenfranchised, we are downtrodden, the oppressed! We seek to belong to something greater than this existence that we have right now in this place, in this space and time. We long for the glory days of our ancestors as if that is all we ever had or ever will have. But I tell you that right here, right now, is all we have and will ever have, here in this country in this space, and in this time. Nothing else! The past is gone, yet it resides within us, and the future is yet to come, but it also resides within us. So with what we have right now, which is the past, the present and the future within, we should be able to create a future similar to our once glorious past!

But in order to get there, we need to come to a realization, one that will piss a lot of you off and others will accept wholeheartedly, and have no problem with.

And that realization is the cold hard fact that the descendants of slaves, with African blood flowing through their veins, that we call African Americans, are Not Africans! Neither are we truly Americans!

We are an amalgamation of these things, these nationalism’s, these concepts, and these ideologies, and because these ideologies are viewed as opposing ideologies, our programming tells us that we need to embrace one or the other, not both. This programming is taught to us by our parents as children, “right vs wrong”, “good vs evil”, “if you’re not with me you’re against me”, and re-enforced in church as the “you can’t straddle the fence” sermon. We’ve always been taught that you have to pick a side, and if we don’t, we’re the one in the wrong, there is no neutral position in life. But this is wrong when it comes down to the African/American debate! I chose to use the examples above to show how the thought process is indoctrinated into our psyches as young African American children, not to debate good and evil or right and wrong!

This is why when we’re confronted with two seemingly opposing ideologies we quickly pick sides. Our programming says its either one or the other, and you will always pick the side of your highest understanding, the one that instills pride in you, which is actually the one that makes you feel the best about your Self. Therefore when one has to choose between African/Black, and American/White we choose to identify with the African/Black first. Those that don’t choose Black first have been considered to be the sellouts and coons back in the day therefore the “real Black man or woman is the one that embraces Africa over America! These so called conscious Black people lay claim that there’s no middle ground even if your mother was white and your father was Black, you must self identify as Black, ask any biracial American. But what they don’t seem to understand is that that very understanding is what the white man, or massa had during slavery, the one drop rule! And if you choose your white side, you’re considered a sellout, a coon, and a host of other derogatory names that seeks to take away your Blackness. And even if you don’t identify as white, or if you have two Black parents but don’t identify with being African, you’re put in the same category, because you have to pick a side, and if you’re not on their side then you’re against them, simply because you’re not with them.

So here we are in 2015 claiming to be conscious Black men but that conscious thought is built directly off the slave traders understanding of who we were to be in this country. The slaves were never meant to be Americans, and generations down the line we are too far removed from our African ancestors, that we are not Africans either, we are an amalgamation of the two. We are now a new people, a people manifested from the remnants of a great race that saw itself decline to the point of colonization and slavery to finally be back in control of our own destiny once again!

Malachi Z York called us NuWabians, some say we are the Moors, Hebrew Israelites, Egyptians, but I say we are all and we are none, therefore we must create a new understanding, a new people.

You can call yourself and African, an African American, or just a plain ole American, that’s up to you, but I will from this day forward, address myself and those in this diaspora in the US, as Afrimerican!

Afrimerican: A people forged from the lowest point of mans existence as slaves, that fought to be free, earned that freedom and began to build. We have fought those that oppose us for over 400 years and we have made great strides. Our birthing pains have been great and there are still more to come. But we must understand and incorporate into our thinking that those that fight against and resist change will always end up on loser’s side of history, it’s inevitable. Therefore we will always be victorious in our quest to change the things that ail our people, it just takes time!

House Negro vs Field Negro (2015)

So I ran across this post in my feed (pictured ) and I was thinking, why do we champion this understanding and embrace it wholeheartedly, because the average African-American will see this meme and feel as if it’s on point!mansion N

We tend to act as if every house negro was a sellout and every field negro was a revolutionary, when it wasn’t even close to that. There were far more field negro’s than house negro’s and if they really wanted to revolt, they could have done so at anytime, but they didn’t.

I applaud Malcolm X for introducing us to this understanding, but 50 years later, we must understand that it was a flawed understanding although it was much needed back then. Nowadays not so much, but if utilized we need to tweak it some to make it more accurate.

When reading the text in the meme it’s very easy to applaud it and think that the writer is a champion of the people but when one actually seeks to utilize wizdom and understanding, then you must ask yourself something! If the house and field negro we’re both slaves, then where’s the division coming from and what made those in the field decide to bring such an understanding to gestation even though it is very negative toward their own people? We’d call that crabs in the barrel or hating nowadays, but its funny how those that don’t equate themselves to being house negro’s love to use the crabs in a barrel analogy for why our people aren’t further ahead than we should be!

My contention is that it’s because the field negro was envious of the house negro! The house negro had a semi-better existence than the field negro, and the field negro hated it. So when the field and house negro were freed, the understanding still thrived but mutated into a different format! It then became the real nigga vs sellout equation! This is where Brother Malcolm gave us his thoughts on our position within American society, and amongst ourselves!

If ones entire understanding is from an oppressed upbringing and under-classed viewpoint then what type of logic and reasoning comes from that? This is why ghetto’s remain ghetto’s!

The understanding utilized to come to the equation set forth by Malcolm X came from an oppressed/field/flawed negro’s standpoint, he was simply taking the entirety of his experience in this country and merging it with the history of his people up until that moment in time! So if the original understanding was built off an flawed mindset, because they couldn’t be in the house, then the vitriol that they spewed to their fellow field negro’s in private, would also be based off of flawed thinking on their part.

Now looking at the meme and adding an envious or jealous understanding to the dynamic of the mansion/house negro equation one must also understand that the apartment/field negro is doing the same today!

How do you criticize the mansion negro and claim that what he’s doing is to keep them checks coming in from massa, yet you work for massa too! Your check is just smaller and you can’t afford a mansion!

And before you go into that selling your soul for money crap, you’re just selling yours for less! Your job helps to support the exact same system that you claim is horrible yet you only seem to get mad at those who have used the system and gained tremendously off of it, but those that are in the same boat as you are alright by your standards.

You’re a revolutionary, a real African, you’re down for the cause, right up to the point that you outpace the rest of the apartment negro’s, then all of a sudden you’re a sellout!

But because the apartment negro’s understanding is the most prevalent, what we see on social media platforms mimic this and makes those seeking knowledge unknowingly prop up misguided understandings such as the mansion/house negro as being bad, but the field/apartment negro’s understanding is considered to be a good thing.

And therein lies our problem! Break the Circle!