Blood Sacrifice: The Exceptionalism Myth They Fight to Uphold

It's not mental illness.
It's not just self hate+fear illness.
It's settler terrorism.
It's jingoism+ xenophobia marinated in racism.
And it's a kind of endemic cultural violence that leads to civil war. 

I've been eying this road America has been on particularly since Sandy Hook. Since 2012, I said to my dear friend Vernice P. Miller, who had been working at the Whitbey School near Sandy Hook, that night, when she came home from her school's lockdown to my apt where she was staying. 

The immediate reaction to that horrific day  was to call it mental illness.
The other immediate public reaction was to call for a ban on guns to curb gun violence.
Followed immediately by the successful pushback from the NRA and Joe Blow public to preserve the right to be armed to kill. As if we were already in pending war or something...where folks where running rampant popping each other off.
At the time the gun count was just under  300million in this country...that we knew of!
And immediately after all of this
...nothing.

Those little white children were worth nothing to the GOP, the NRA, or the racist fuckers who just wanted the right to carry and to kill. 

That was very informative to my brown foreign body.

I knew I was staring down the path of a civil war, and I said it plainly...but such plainneess couldn't find root in the American consciousness or imagination,  because the #MythOfExceptionalism taught us to think "that cant happen here."

Folks...it happened here before!

And what brought the first one about has not yet been resolved, which therefore has yet to effect a true (r)evolution of belief or systemic leadership in this country.

And...this is...just a country.
Like any other.
Determined by a People.

There have been a few upRisings world wide since then, including the recent ones in Sudan, and Puerto Rico, but America for the most part has been asleep.

239 shootings between 2013 after Sandy Hook to the Parkland shooting in 2018.
to
251 mass shootings since the start of 2019.

Looks like we about to blow y'all.

So much pain for these families. So much terror for those of us trying to go about our business in public spaces.
Since I moved to Washington, an open carry state 4 years ago, there have been several local mass shootings...including at high schools where my partners kids attend.

My 17 year old friend said sullenly when I returned last night, "I'm sorry...welcome back to America."

My partner and I were bemused at how little airplay mass shootings get now. Because they are normalized. Normalized!!!
Like ...oh well, there goes another one. Nothing to see here. 

My family and friends abroad reach out in grave concern for how they see America portrayed in international news. I have lived to see media portrayals turn on a country that strove to control such optics in years past. The Third World looks so appealing now when once it was once portrayed as the place so stay clear of.

Travel advisories now issued about #ComingToAmerica by those same countries immigrating peoples left to have a better life here in the United/Divided States.

This shooter may have been a Trrump supporter, but be clear, he was not invented by Trump.
I am tired and terrified to see folks talking like this shit started under Trump.
This shit CREATED Trump! 

He is a dangerous vehicle that they ride, but they would have found another way.

So call me an alarmist.
I don't give a fuck.
I come from an unfortunate legacy of coups and civil wars.
I know what I'm looking at.
Sorry for you if you can see it straight.

Racism is a constructed sickness, and here in Amerikkka it is heavily armed which makes the color of this worldwide issue particularly ominous here.
You tell me what other ingredients are needed.

The DNC better stop with their ego driven infighting and take a note from the GOP playbook: a collective vision is the only way to turn this tide. 

The last 30 years of Republican projects and lobbies, including the Tea Party paving some of this way, have proven as much. Cuz, here we are...and those party leaders who don't even care about their own foot soldier constituents, are fanning laughing gas into these flames.

I still believe these very nationalist/supremist foot soldiers- the ones who will topple this mythological throne of supremacy themselves. But how much damage will happen before they reckon with the fact that their own heroes of death betrayed them? How much damage will they create within that reckoning?

I don't know what we do about this culturally, because this is a socio-cultural issue too.  And for all the hard realism I peddle in, I also still believe Love has to be a part of the answer and the work.  A functional proactive, hard kind of love, which is frankly the only kind that heals.  

But first - get the legislation to regulate guns once and for all!!

Please pardon any typos. Sent from my so-called 'smartphone' 

Ain't I A Woman, Too? - Blindspots, Gender Loopholes, and Institutional Power

One of the most insidious tricks of the patriarchy is the endowment of power bestowed on the highest rings of subordinate powers.  This #metoo/#timesup movement has shaken up a lot in the last year, that needed to be loosened from recesses of our collective minds, but, there is tricky ground left to be dug up. 

The  maddening irony of watching numerous men lose their titles and livelihoods in the months past, in both private and public sectors, without due process of investigation or criminal proceedings - while a known, self-admitted sexual predator stands atop us all with title and job in tact, leaves a terrible, acidic burn in the guts of survivors who STILL remain silent.  I don't argue about whether those men deserved to be stripped of their power after being exposed as abusers, but thinking in the longterm, I could not look away from the inherent blindspots and potential consequences of the methods used. 

The trouble about the fervent rash of calling for the heads this way, is that we set a Salem-witch-hunt precedent of how to handle this matter, that would inevitably create the potential pendulum revenge swing-back that would possibly hurt victims even more in the long run.  And before you come for me, understand I'm taking about employing systems of justice for all, that ensures they keep working for our specific concerns, because that is how, checks, balances, and the law...should work, granted, in an ideal world.  Further, I wondered, in such a climate where we were not leaning on such protocols, who else could take advantage of it, because as much good as this has done for survivors to see power stripped from those men who abused it, it unavoidably would be exploited for other power game purposes too, by both men and women.  It could become a tool used for activities unintended. 

Now some call for and praise relief for that same unused due process to be applied to Kavanaugh, a man whose rulings, if he gets the job (after years of successive promotions in the judicial system) will MAKE laws and role back civil rights rulings we need to remain an evolving democracy, long after sex-predator in chief is gone. We didn't call for such investigations in many instances before, so how do we think this will go over now?!  There is a potential backlash for that inconsistency.  Also, behind, beside, or in font of each of any of these men, is often a woman. There were women who stood by Cosby, one of the few who has actually been investigated, charged, tried, and sentenced because of his accusers stepping forward.  But even if an FBI investigation is granted because of Dr. Ford's brave accounting at the hearings, are we still looking at the full here? Are we able to hold the whole truth?  I don't think so, because we still have many people out there who are not being called out, and who continue to question survivors and choose 'sides' according to political belief and not objective, observable, investigated inconsistencies!  And most importantly missing is the questions, "What if you, what if I, what if we, remain silent because it is another woman whose power would be at risk or negatively unleashed for the telling? What if it is a woman who abused, or allowed, condoned, or repressed the cry of abuse? And are men or boys included in this cry?"

The #metoo movement, for all of the very necessary empowerment it has created for us, worries me deeply and personally in that it is mainly the bellow of taking down men (mostly white men), but is still yet to make space for survivors who stand silent under the boot of a woman. 

Being Informed: A Proactive Inconvenience to the Cruelty of the Times

The viral photo of 2 year old Honduran girl crying while her mother was searched at the Mexico border in McAllen Texas.  She was not taken from her parents at the border. © John Moore/GETTY

Of course we are all immensely relieved that an Executive Order was signed this week...which prevents future family separations from occuring. Thank God! BUT, I will not express gratitude or offer backpatting for crazymaking.

If you manufacture chaos in your nation, then sweep in to reverse it, that is a gross abuse on the psyche your people. Period. Not to speak of the FACT that the very serious psycho-emotional and social damage done to these families and children cannot be reversed with an EO. So no, you will not be normalized with a Thank You DJT. Now you are to be critically and strategically examined, and swiftly dismissed with our collective focus and with the full democratic legal scope available to us like never before.

You bet your ass #ThisIsAmerica, and this is also the World…and the World expects better, because America’s long decree to the World is that it will grow up to do better. This man is the burden of #ThePeople who must fight like hell to keep our emotional stamina up and never to accept or normalize ANYTHING he does, because he does not care about this country, he does not care about the law, he does not care about this world, he does not care about #ThePeople — aside from the inconvenience we may be to him, in any given moment.

So,

…let us become very inconvenient.

But we have to be focused. The mere fact that all this whiplash inducing immoral madness came to such a head in the same week as Juneteenth and World Refugee Day makes reality dip into head-burning surreality. 

The spin cycle of chaos and distraction is indefatigable and they are making emotional puppets of us all.

What is supremely important going forward in this, is understanding how the withdrawal from the UN Council on Human Rights affects this situation,and other social justice concerns that may not be in the headlines today, or remain in the headlines tomorrow. This withdrawal positions the US to begin shaping isolationist policies free of international law pressures...especially with regard to the children it now houses in cages and tender-age tent cities.

PLEASE NOTE — the US is the ONLY country which has not ratified the 1989 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child...

a convention swiftly and widely voted on by a total now of 196 countries since it was created. It is why America(despite admonishnishment over the years from various human rights commissions and NGOs domestically and internationally) gets away with imprisoning more youth than any nation on earth;

• why it is still legal within several States in the US to have child brides;
• why asylum seeking children…both accompanied and unaccompanied have been treated the way they have; 
• why young people are saddled with a lifetime of stress inducing debt just for going to school;
• why meals in schools can include high sugar servings and other ingredients known to cause ill health in brain development, etc.;
• why universal care or oversight in foster care is administratively stressed, under-resourced, and difficult to standardize across the country; 
• why children can be knowingly exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water with little done to correct this;
• why kids can be targeted consumers for big pharma drugs;
• why the threat of gun violence does little in the debate of reforming gun laws, even though this affects increasing numbers of children across the country. 

The list goes on, all definitively describing the endangerment of the welfare of children.

And though I list these things…it is not off topic, for this growing culture of endangerment is what was immediately and most horrifically inherited by these poor children ripped from their asylum-seeking families and are now lost in the system across the country. And though it is within every sovereigns legal right to guard its borders, it is also a domestic and international human legislated right to seek asylum. Yes, it is US Law, - safeguarded by our constitution — and upheld by SCOTUS in 1886 in Wong Wing v US.* It is the law that these families be granted due process/hearings, even if their cases result in deportation. It is also their right to not be held stateless in detention for an undetermined period, especially when cleared as innocent civilians and non-threatening to the State - an important distinction that is repeatedly dismissed at our borders and entry points and in detention centers across the country. How is it right to criminalize human beings who are fleeing for their lives?!

And given the rampant issues that were already present in how cases are handled, the backlog paired with a scarcity of legal counsel and translators, the additional challenge of assigning separate 'Alien numbers' to the parents and children will make reuniting these families -in some cases- next to impossible. This practically defines endangerment, as many of the 2300+ children have been wrecklessly set on an unthinkable course of long-term risks and actions against their well-being by this terrifying no-tolerance policy. 

It is clear that the presumption of safety means being a white American — meaning having white privilege, right? 

Many native Americans, non-white immigrants and black Americans have used this moment to voice personal or collective historical accounts of this happening before though. Children being ripped from families is not new in the founding historical record of this country. But given the poor congressional response to safeguarding white kids from gun danger in recent years for instance,can we really expect that children of asylum-seekers/asylees will ever be prioritized? Point is, why is America withholding itself from international scrutiny and jurisprudent accountability where universal child protections are concerned?

Power when unchecked will eventually cease to discriminate. No precedent set by this administration should ever go unchecked. Everyone can be ‘othered’.

My mother who’s life work has been in the international legal arm of Human Rights advocacy has never failed to refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child consistently and frequently for years. I have absorbed it as my own personal outrage and a marker of what leadership will or will not stretch to care about regarding its citizens, let alone immigrants and refugees. I highly recommend reading it for a broader grasp of our governments activities regarding children.

This is also why the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concern of Trump even threatening that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) destroy records of abuse in detention centers and by border patrol officers matters even more sharply now too. Because many children and families remain there right now, needing our sober witnessing and acute aid.

Sure the world is watching, but the rule of law along with shifting economic realities among allied states, have precluded the success of global pressure to shift how America conducts itself...for years now. As a major economic contributor to many of these organisations it is very tricky -for ALL of us- for America to pull out of any of them, and it is believed that more withdrawals are imminent.

And one has to ask….what would it mean to be isolated in a wealthy well-armed nation that once proclaimed itself with the role and responsibility of policing Human Rights conduct and policy around the world? 

Who would come to our aid? Who could? (These are not rhetorical questions…I just have no idea…)

It is my most earnest interest that we increase our understanding of how international law works and its governing bodies; the inefficiencies and successes. And of course, we need to be better informed of our own laws. ***[Edit - June 25th] Because if our very own president is calling for the dismissal of legal proceedings at the border, on twitter no less, which is patently unconstitutional, then he can call for a lot of other changes too. A number of federal lawsuits will be filed against this administration by the families, and rightly so!  But are we confident our current SCOTUS will uphold the rights we’ve come to take for granted?  With midterms coming up, we should vote with this in mind.*** It has never mattered more, because given this extreme moral crisis within this land of Hope, we may very well be looking at the beginnings of the remapping of World alliances as we know it.

We all need to grow up quick and wrap our heads around deeper research, and continue to work however we can, as health and wellness practitioners, legal professionals, teachers, mothers,  artists, cooks, fathers, entrepreneurs, construction workers, writers, curators, small business owners, engineers, farmers, yogis, digital creators, advocates and activists, designers, basket weavers, whoever... 
we all need to mix in more history and global + civic studies into our work. The times, and this madman who has waged war against facts, critical thinking and general well-being demands it.

Something spiritual about this all really…

I’ve long believed that it was his destiny to be in that office,

...perhaps to awaken us to our own.

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay

Excerpt from HOME, read below by poet Warsan Shire

#nomoresleep #livetolearn #webelongtoeachother #remember #reConnect #GetThoseVotesReady #Midterms2018

#thework

Mobilizing Miracles 

Additional links for donations and volunteer calls

• Here's a list of organizations for asylum advocacy and legal aid that are working at the border and around the country to represent children separated from their families.  They need volunteer lawyers, trauma care specialists, and funding. 

• Here's a great list of important groups working to protect kids separated from their parents. Multiple donations made easy, where you can split your donations among several organizations you believe in.  http://ireallydocare.com

Women and children at a bus station in McAllen, Texas, following their release from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images | SOURCED from The Cut

Embedded Links and Additional Reading: 

UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, the most committed agreement comprised of 196 countries. The last latecomer Somalia joined in 2015: 

-  Definition of the Convention

-  The Articles of the Convention


The threat of destruction of records-of-abuse in detention centers: https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice -and-border-patrol-abuses/ice-plans-start-destroying -records-immigrant

History of family separations in the US: 
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/20/family-separation-immigration-history-slavery-mass-incarceration/

***The challenge of reuniting children with parents:
https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/reunite-immigrant-parent-with-child.html

America’s Child Brides: 

https://www.bbc.com/news /av/world-us-canada-41727495/why-does-the-us -have-so-many-child-brides

BigPharma drugs and kids: 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article /big-pharma-s-manufactured-epidemic-the -misdiagnosis-of-adhd/

Lead blood levels of Flint Kids from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525e1.htm

….

***Edited.
   Last Edited: 26th Jun 2018

Psychopathic Privileges v Life Affirming Principles: The Young Are Reclaiming Their Lives in America

I am not a parent of high school students but I am living with someone who is.  I know many of you are parents and teachers, and I too have been a teacher in high schools where safety was an issue. 

In just over two years of living in Washington, my partner Dale and I have had to process three shootings involving the schools his children attend.  To hear a young person cry in the middle of the night while we all sit on twitter live with her, tracking posts to see if there is anyone else she knows who was shot, is not something you soon forget.  But this of course was not an isolated incident, thus the task force subsequently commissioned to conduct comprehensive student/teacher training sessions and drills as the new norm. 

The day before the Florida school shooting, an eighteen year old was apprehended in my little town of Everett. His grandmother, disturbed by his behavior, read his diaries and found terrifying entries of his plans to “get the biggest fatality number”. He wanted to make it “infamous” by using his semi-automatic AK rifle at one high school,  while triggering strategically placed homemade timed explosives at another (where, incidentally Dale’s son currently attends).  This would-be shooter apparently studied the “past shooters/bombers mistakes”, intending for his chosen date of attack - set for April 19th, to rival those of the Oklahoma City Bombing (04/19/1995) and the Columbine High School attack (04/20/1999).

The grandmother reported her grandson to the police and turned in his diaries - and thank God, because she potentially saved scores of children by making that call.  The lucky part here is that he was caught before he killed. The frightening part is that he was armed to do it, planned to do it, and - that his story hit the news the same morning as the shooting on the far opposite end of the country. The cops were all over the schools, with bomb sniffing dogs; the kids all on lockdown. The usual.  Or I should say, full blown epidemic.  

This young man played online video games with Dale’s son; and he should be freaked out of his mind by this, but like us, he is apparently numb from the shock...and why, because he's been through this before. His sister, prior to her graduation, had been through this before. Their friends have all been through this before.  It is to be expected. This is life for high school kids in America. And this cannot be stereotyped by city or State, because Washington is a state (along with Oregon and California) renowned for a broad and progressive local legislative portfolio which much of the country has yet to catch up to.  And yet, for unfortunate contrast, Washington is an open carry State with less than preferable gun control measures. We have at least 11 gun and ammo shops within a 10 mile radius of our suburban home, where with relative ease Dale and I could purchase semi-automatic weapons if we wanted to - and that includes two Wal-Marts.  

 signage on glass gun cases at nearby Wal-Mart store

Last year while traveling in Canada, during a time when I was researching gun violence for a related article, I discussed at length the vast difference in gun control legislation there with my gun-owning uncle who all but spelled out how difficult it is to get one, much less multiple guns even as a “responsible” citizen. 

Based on categories of "prohibited", "restricted", and "permitted" guns in Canada, he informed me of legally mandated articles per gun type when applying for a permit: 

You must get references to apply, permits must state specific use of the weapon, and permit-checks are regularly enforced; there are rules for assembly, and double and triple lock storage and transportation; signed spousal agreement is required for guns to be present in the matrimonial home; mandatory courses in usage and safety procedures must be passed along with thirty to sixty day waiting periods before permits are issued for purchase; and, repeated psych-assessments are conducted to ensure you continue to be a responsible owner at licensing, and for every subsequent renewal. 

You cannot just openly carry weapons, nor is there a lifetime guarantee that you will be granted renewed permits to carry them.   And of course there is a logical list of people who just cannot get one at all - like the mentally ill, substance abusers, and domestic abusers. No free-for-alls there.  And how many mass/school shootings does Canada have? Far fewer than us!  And keep in mind they have a robust gun owning culture too - which makes them the best comparison for what the culture of prohibitive gun laws can prevent.  

Culture and Dangerous Optics

There is nothing new here. We know the numbers, we have over 300 million guns out there.  The threat of this was contextualized thoroughly in an important work made 16 years ago by Michael Moore after the Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colorado - which was the sister school of one of my best friends.  The heartlessness of years of disregard by our leaders after every school shooting since, (especially Sandy Hook - given the number and age of the victims) has left a nation nearly paralyzed in fear and confusion, feeling undervalued and helpless. I know I lost hope after Sandy Hook in particular - because it confirmed in a gruesome and dissonant way for me as an immigrant of color, that if little white children were treated as less valuable than gun sales, then these lobbyists and every old white guy official paid by them certainly cared nothing for anyone else in this country.  That incident alone showed the transcendence of their greed beyond any racial reasoning we often put on our many social troubles.  They value only their profits and no one else - which attacks the very mythology of exceptionalism they wish this nation to uphold.  And when you combine this with Trump’s bill reversing gun control measures for the mentally ill last February, in a nation that has, in the same 16 year period since Columbine, defunded mental health programs nationwide, we see how this has all run amok  - and there is nothing but absolute cruelty to blame this on. 

And the thing is, this isn’t only about being scared for your child being at risk of being killed. There is also the fear of your child  being the killer?! A frightening contention.  What about helping out those parents and family members, who certainly are not aided by an open market for weapons! The shooter in Florida was on watch lists, yet he was able to get weapons.  Conversely, this young man in our town was not on any watch lists, neither was he suspected by even his own friends!  No one saw it coming - except grandma.  I do not know his mental condition - compared with the Florida school shooter, as some may debate, but one thing is clear, he was disconnected and very angry.  And he was able to get advanced weaponry to work that anger out just as easily, because leadership failed again to make that difficult. 

And let’s look at that - we have a very young generation who sees through every promise society has broken.  

Leadership has failed to propose any new gun control laws much less getting any passed - after all these deaths - in every facet of our so-called free lives.  And in that time a whole generation has grown up knowing their leadership does not value their lives, our lives.  

When you teach kids this, then you say to them that they are powerless, and the more violent or angry among them unravel and reach with ease for weapons that give them what they think is power.  They fear nothing.  They have no innocent bubble to burst.  This is not only about immediate safety, this is about a deeply rooted cultural value for LIFE.  

Worst still, this culture exports, and can infect the thinking of children elsewhere who look to America as the arbiter of power in the world. 

As James Baldwin said:  “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

In any other context the NRA and organizations like them would be called a terrorist group or at the very least, sympathizers to terrorists.  In ANY other context. And this includes anyone in their profit stream - especially too as it pertains to jurisprudent action to support their function. But no, in the American context it is called a right as a citizen.  Touting the 2nd amendment alongside your semi-automatics makes you patriot.  

Gun violence in the name of ‘self-defense’ cannot be defended as a culture, it is a violent dogma that is ABSOLUTELY and murderously insane.  

The Youth Revolution of Safeguards

I would LOVE to see every student, teacher, and parent from coast to coast in this country take to the streets, ON A WEEK DAY, or a whole school week to march on their respective Capitols - LEAD by the YOUTH to scare the shit out of these assholes to change this madness. And it is coming. 

A nation of children marching in defense of their lives is the most powerful thing that can happen, and who can deny them this? These kids and educators cannot live this way, and parents should not be helpless and terrified to send their children to school. We should not be terrified to go out with our friends to see a movie, dance at the club, watch our favorite musicians on stage.  This is a sure way to sink this place into total incivility...into civil war.  Yes I will say that - again.

Congress and lobbyist thugs, if you will not protect the children of your nation, you will have not nation. This could actually be a moment when our NRA funded so-called President could create sound, enlightened, historical legislation in his dark destructive portfolio. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

This is an awful burden leaders have placed on the backs of their young. It is not fair to them, but these young, articulate, and impassioned teenagers are about to take this country back and they have their own leading voices to guide them. And, they will be old enough to vote soon.   

THIS MOMENT IS POWERFUL.
It is the most hopeful moment I have felt in years. 

Thank you #EmmaGonzalez, you brave #SoulJah

#StudentsDemandAction
#StudentsStandUp 

#WeCallBS 

#TimesUp

#thework

#theywontsleep

#midterms2018

#votethemout

#calledit

#castlestormers

#studentwalkout

#nationwide

#newgunlaws

#guncontrolinAmerica

#gunregulationsnow

Important sites: 
Moms Demand Action

Everytown for Gun Safety

Everytown Research 



Updates: 
Feb 20 - Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/20/how-rightwing-media-is-already-attacking-florida-teens-speaking-out

#NeverAgain

Lost Stories of the Powerful Black Image (Just No to More Black Violence Pornography)

I wrote this in a comment response to Ian Mair, who posted Snoop's reaction to the airing of the new Roots on the History Channel on his Facebook page.  Ian shared why he felt watching Roots (the remake) was not aligned with his energetic preferences. 

Within the ensuing  comment thread - supporting and opposing points were made by a few of us, regarding Roots and also cited  Twelve Years A Slave, the effects on collective thinking or subjective feeling, the Hollywood system and the projects supported within it, the image and history of Africans and the diaspora in Western media, comparisons between this and that of other groups who have suffered genocidal atrocities in history such as the Jews, and so on.  I offer this for context for what you will read below - which I share with few grammatical  alterations to the words I typed in responsive flow on Facebook.  

___________

Comment:   

"Until the lion learns how to write, the story will always glorify the hunter". Yup Yup Yup.  

 I remember the first time I heard this proverb it was uttered by the late Komla Dumor (BBCAfrica) in his TEDtalk Telling the African Story. Like many of these kinds of talks we see on bigger platforms these days - it resonated like a loud thunder clash for me, not just as a black woman, but as a West African growing up in Jamaica where I was teased at school for having black gums and assumed to live in trees when I visited family in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. No one believed we had houses and cars and stoves and clothing, with zippers!  I learned from a very young age what limited or slanted information does to the mental and emotional confidence of people WITHIN the diaspora - much less outside of it.  I also had National Geographic to thank for a lot of exhaustive education I had to provide others as a child.  Yes.  True story.  And still today. 

Let's not get it twisted - this is a CONTEXT issue.  I hear Snoop and Ian on this big time. 

And for sure I too will never be a fan of the "get over it" movement - too much of a 'Know and Be Empowered By Your History' advocate for that.  

Two protests I had with 12 years a Slave, and all other content that promulgates the very singular view of black history. 

1) I watched that movie - and from an artistic standpoint (and I am an artist) - I thought it was a beautifully made film, cinematography, casting, performances, editing, the silences and their use in driving the visual content… all powerful.  BUT what pissed me off was the absolute recognition that yet another epic slave film was still the only kind of feature film that Hollywood was and still is comfortable funding .  

2) I am not knocking the lovely and now (thank the LORD!) iconic Lupita for her Oscar - but a complex aspect of her winning for that role fresh out of school with no other body of work to access, also had the markings of a head pat by Tinseltown establishment to say "See black people, we see you.  There there now."  Please note what followed with black films released thereafter, and the two year in a row #OscarSoWhite - if this point seems doubtful.  

A hard ideas for some - and I agree SO much with Barbara on this - is that every black woman I feel would have it in their (epi)genetic memory to conjure up the pain offered in that performance, to offer the complexity of otherness in a scene of being whipped by your rapist who punishes you for being so irresistibly and confusingly regal in your natural beauty.  Yes I said it. 

Now…for good measure, I am so grateful she did win that Oscar - and it did actually serve beyond her, in that her clout is every bit the reason Producers could be convinced to fund Eclipsed on Broadway which I just saw - a show written by, about, and performed by an all black/African woman ensemble which is  now nominated for 6 Tonys .  Who would care otherwise?  No one - that's who. And that is the current truth. 

I get the point you make Marlon James - but I don't think that is what's being said here.  Or at least that's not the point for me.  To Noella Constable's point - Jews have waged a VERY successful campaign for holocaust victims that indeed has whooped the world into near deferential subservience when speaking about their people and customs.  Kudos for sure.  But why have they been successful in this campaign is what matters.  And here we arrive at Context.  

Who controls the media?  And what else do we know about Jewish history?  Much more than we do African/Black history!  How much more financial control over place and image do the Jewish people have in society at large as opposed to the Black Diaspora, and again why?

Having the balance of who a People are in the fullness of their history allows the rest of our human family to full grasp the land were were kidnapped from and what was TAKEN from Africans and Afro-Descendants. You cannot fully empathize with a story when you only have the gruesome fragments of it, or a dehumanized view of the people who suffered the assault. Human beings relate to loss.  Plain and simple.  And most of the world still has NO clue what was lost.   

Most people do not know of the Kingdoms and Empires of Africa; the religions, mythologies, and languages of the continent; the epic sagas of family, love and war; the scholarship or monuments; the artistic, cultural, gastronomical, and technological impact the continent had on the world through exploration, travel, and innovation LONG before European interference - neigh existence.  And why? Because that information was destroyed or denied dissemination …and to our discussion here, still is, by the distinct lack of funding of such stories ...in Hollywood, our educational institutions, our governments...   

Full series on avail by DVD on Amazon

There is zero shortage of the same in many other cultures but especially the Euro-colonial culture we have all been raised in, so relativity and catharsis seem easier to conjure for many, and thus more profitable for information institutions. Just look at the rage we are contending with in this country now, among all 'races' and cultures - this is not just borne of violent history, that is maintained by a lack of complete information to humanize that history. 

And so - to say one wishes to (and I hate to use this now hackneyed word) curate their experience by taking in more positive pan-African information kept from us prior, is not a rejection of the history of slavery, it is the invitation of seeing the bigger picture from which to understand the full atrocity of it.  

By all means - make and see more Roots - but can we also dig for deeper ones than Kunte Kinte?  I strongly believe it is there that the diaspora and all other cultures of the world will come to really understand who WE are! 

(Sorry for the blog post on your thread Ian - lol)

____________



...touche. :-)

Phone Life

After I saw this, I put down my phone and didn't pick it up for the rest of the day... A touching 2 minute video about the sad reality of why we are not living in the moment.
Posted by Sahil Khan on Tuesday, 7 January 2014

These distracting electronic companions not only cut down on our empathy close up, but also further away. They give us all this information about each other that we are overwhelmed to keep up with, and thus desensitized to act on. And what's more, the support system for our gadgets comes from extracted resources in the poorest countries worldwide to give us longer battery life, so we can keep ignoring our family members and friends along with broader issues of socio-economic equity. Yet we will use these same gadgets to #Occupy comment threads of protest about the cold inequalities of global connectedness. It's all just plain nuts. We are living the ultimate dissonance. #ExistentialQuicksand I call it. And so simple a thing to just turn the phone off. Remarkably our lives don't end when we do! This is why it is becoming so radical to courageously live the way our grandparents did - plugged out. Even now I feel anxiety typing this here. But is blogging one in the same? No, right?  Ugh...deep guilty sigh.