Category Archives: Race Relations

Real Black, Fake Black

Posted by Cleo on

realfake

I used to be ashamed of my upbringing when I first began conversing with my sistas and brothas in the conscious movement.  I would remain quiet when they would speak of struggles and hardships that I never had to experience; tales of missing fathers, police sirens, gunshots, and poverty.  My heart bled for them in silence.  My tears ran freely. Thoughts of their childhood being cut often before their age reached double digits. I mourned the unburied dead that was their innocence.

I guess they though my silent anguish was for my own tragedy, one worst than they could ever imagine.  They were curious and began to ask me to share my own stories but would recoil when I told them my tears were not for me but for them.  I grew up sheltered and protected by a loving mother and father.  My extended family and my community was even more love and protection.  I was a sheltered, church girl, the youngest in my family, maybe even a little spoiled.  My childhood was wonderful.  Growing up surrounded by lush forest, green pastures, and huge front and back yards where I would play with my pets, siblings, cousins, and friends on hot summer days.  Swing sets, pools, dolls, bikes, summer vacation flights to northern and east coast cities, road trips, shopping sprees, Christmas list fulfilled….I didn’t want for anything.  But I felt ashamed.

I felt ashamed as my blackness diminished in their eyes, ashamed of my parent’s success, ashamed of the very peace that we were fighting for so that all little black boys and girls could feel as safe and protected as I did…

My mom worked her way up from assistant secretary to director, the highest position in her field, before she retired.  She also owned her own catering business for a while.  My father drew blueprints and designed houses, even internationally when I was very young, then came back home to work in the non-profit sector writing grants that enabled people to buy and keep land, and build and buy their own homes before he passed away when I was 18.  They achieved this while living less than 30 minutes away from schools that still had two proms, while sending their children to segregated schools, and a high black population ruled by white power in the Black Belt of Alabama.  But they made me feel ashamed.

I was 19 and didn’t know who Marcus Garvey was, never heard of Black Wall Street, or Seneca Village.  They gave me the same book of lies called history books that every other child in America received.  I spent my free time reading R.L. Stine and The Babysitter’s club because I didn’t know about the great African American literary period called the Harlem Renaissance until I was almost 18.  I believed at that time that respectability would make the world accept me even while I did lunch with white friends who couldn’t take me to their houses because their parents didn’t allow it; even while they plan parties and cookouts that I couldn’t attend because their families would be there.   I learned quickly in my historically white university that no matter how smart, articulate, or well-dressed and groomed I was, I could still be subjected to the same treatment that people who didn’t posses those traits do.

I started to wake up and be “conscious”.  I started to realize that my sun kissed darkness meant something more than just an organ that protected my internal structures.  I studied melanin, I returned to natural, started working with youth organizations, listening to neo-soul music,  reading about Kemet, learning about American-born black religions and creeds, pre-slavery Africa, hidden truths…  I kept my head in those books and websites. When I looked up, I was different.  I saw the world differently.  The lies, the deceit, the pure evilness of society.  People I knew didn’t understand.  I sought out these other people who seem like they had learned some of these secrets too only to have them shun me and question my blackness because of my lack of “struggle”.

What people need to understand is that everyone have different roles.  We need all different types of people in this fight.  We need people who march the streets with signs and chants, we need street soldiers to protect us, we need that college grad to help change laws and become advocates in the institutions that keep racism alive, we need speakers and writers to use their words to spread knowledge and change hearts.  No one is invalid or useless in the conscious movement.  We are all valuable and important no matter what our experiences include and no matter where we are on the journey to freedom and truth.

Black Lives Don’t Matter

Posted by Cleo on

535762_10150616064186504_2079615023_n

I remember back in 2007 when I was working with the Alabama Department of Juvenile Justice. That was when I really understood police brutality and how it affected young, black men. I was green, hardly any street sense, but I had a passion for working with youth. I tried to be someone they could talk to but it often weighted on me heavily. I would bring work home a lot.

One day I was talking to a group of students during rec time about staying out of trouble when they got out. I suggested calling the police instead of always resulting to street justice. I thought I was teaching them but they ended up teaching me. One kid stopped me and said, “Miss A, how can you expect me to call the same police that had my face in the dirt just for walking down the sidewalk…. to come help me?”

I paused and gasp. At that point I had never personally had a bad experience with the police. The ones I knew were helpful and just did their jobs, but the tears begin to flow as they told me story after story of fear, pain, and total disregard for human life. How even as little kids they experienced police brutality doing simple things like walking home from the park or from a friend’s house. My heart broke for them.

I lied to them. Not on purpose. But I told them that when they got older and could afford to move out of those bad neighborhoods, they wouldn’t have to experience that anymore. I told them to get their education, learn their rights, etc…..bullshit respectability. As I look around today, I know that none of that works. Your educational or economic status shouldn’t determine your right to fair treatment. How you dress, how well you speak, the neighborhood you reside in, nor the color of your skin should make a difference in your rights. Everyday I get proved wrong just how those boys proved me wrong back then.

You don’t know sadness til you hear a 16 yr old black child cry about feeling worthless to the world when his life has barely started. When he thinks he will die in violence no matter what he chose to do in life. What the hell do we really tell these kids?! I don’t think I know anymore but I refuse to lie to them again…

Less Than, Greater Than

Posted by Cleo on

lit

When black men save and rescue black women, nobody hears about it.  The world only shows his heroism for white ones.  No wonder we don’t feel protected and valued by our own, especially when no hero dads were ever in the home.

Nothing has changed since the days of slavery with the black woman and black man both victims of the system but the man either too broken or too powerless to do anything about it or even care.  Yet the black women being strength to the nation, goddesses in their own right as they deal in their maternal, ever questioned femininity, and superhuman strength to do what her man cannot.  She wails, she weeps, and she gets loud, angry, impassioned, and brave.  She has to because not doing so will leave her weak, broken, and submissive to powers that could kill her and her family.  Her strength gained and earned through hurt, pain, and growth used as a lash to beat her back by the very men and boys she tried to protect.

White fleshed heaped on her back by the pounds. White flesh praised while hers is denied.  Measured on a scale, the more whiteness she possess, the more the scales tip in her favor.  Psychologically denied to be a black woman, with black skin, black hair, black voice, black love, black passion, and be happy about it.  Permed, processed, dreaded, braided, afro’d and free, her hair is controversy at all times to some population of people, even in the state that it grew from her scalp places a political weight on her that no other woman in the world has to endure.

Funny that her black flesh used to have such economical value, yet so little respect, so little regard….  Her curves weight more than her mind, her spirit, and her love, yet viewed richly in sex and visual candy.  Her men, her black brothas heaping blame and shame on her for her hesitation to submit, attempts to live in a visual world seeped in European beauty standards in a world that judge women nearly exclusively by their looks, her struggle to raise children that men have little to nothing to do with, her desire to love a man yet has never been loved only lusted by men….so many things that are beyond her control, things used as reasons why white flesh is more valuable than her black flesh.  He is blind to how his words are receipts declaring his own damage and victimhood to a system feeding him the fallacy.  His weakness and brokeness has caused him to use misguided masculinity full of pain expressed as anger and resentment to the black woman; causing him to attack the black woman instead of the system that made them both this way.   His sexualized body viewed as strength while he looks in disgust as the black woman’s sexualized body.  Not understanding that he unconsciously values white and foreign flesh as more valuable and treats it as such.

Black on Black Crime is a racist LIE

Posted by Cleo on

Image

I read the news on occasion, just to get a general idea of what is going on in the world.  I think the media/news networks are crap and more concerned about ratings than truly educating and informing people.  Sometimes I visit Yahoo! News to read up on articles that catch my attention.  I used to visit the comment section but I can’t anymore.  Any time a news story is published on Yahoo! News and the person is black, the comment section looks like a conservative KKK meeting.  Even when the victim and the perpetrator is black, I see some of the most vile comments I have ever seen in my life.  They talk about the fallacy of black on black crime as if it is actually true.  I know these idiots don’t do any research.  They are just victims of believing what the media puts out there.

Recently, I had a conversation with a guy that said that he lives in an all white neighborhood because he feel like it is safer for him and his children.  He said black on black crime proves that black people are violent beast who murder people at a staggering rate.  I called his bluff with my excellent research skills and proved to him that violence and murder knows no color.

According to the CDC:

Homicides

Total-16,259 Male-12,774 Female-3,485

White-7,863 Male-5,648 Female-2,215

Black-7,818 Male-6,704 Female-1,114

Suicides -PAGE 51

Total-38,364 Male-30,277 Female-8,087

White-34,690 Male-27,422 Female-7,268

Black-2,144 Male-1,755 Female-389

Indian-469 Male-344 Female-125

Click to access nvsr61_04.pdf

According to the FBI numbers for America in 2009 where the race of the murderer and murdered were known:

  • 2963 white-on-white murders
  • 2604 black-on-black murders
  • 454 black-on-white murders
  • 209 white-on-black murders

According to this data from the CDC, a white man is more likely to kill himself or be killed by another white man than by a black person.  In other words, white men are more a danger to themselves than black people.  The sad part is that many black people believe the black on black crime fallacy as well.  It is a radicalized term that feeds off racist fears of black people.  As you see, there is not a huge difference in the number of homicides according to race but we never hear white on white crime discussed in the media.  I will keep demonizing the media until they stop telling lies and promoting division in people.  It is a proven fact that children who do not watch television and read more have higher self-esteem than children who watch television and read less.  Any time you see someone use the term black on black crime or try to make excuses for their racism, hit them with these figures.  I copied and pasted this chart in Yahoo! News comments section about 10 times one day. They got so mad, that I got cursed out and called every name but my screen name.  Knowledge and education is a racist person’s kryptonite.  Real friends don’t let friends walk around ignorant.

Colorblind

Posted by Cleo on

Image

Colorblind

I love lovely people.  People who are smart, caring, understanding, compassionate, generous, unselfish, friendly, and kind.  It doesn’t matter how much money they have, what color that are, or where they live.  I see them for the individual that they are.  I can’t stand a true asshole.  However, I have a soft spot for assholes; the kind that play dirty because they are really sensitive and act like assholes to put up a wall around their emotions.   True ignorant assholes come in all forms, shapes, and colors.

I grew up in a small town, a rural area that is extremely racially segregated.  In 2014, it still is that way.  I have lived and visited many places where it is not so segregated.  I have had friends from all different types of racial and cultural backgrounds.  I think it is amazing that there is still this huge cultural gulf between black and white people.  I think it is because we don’t attempt to really understand each other’s cultures and it sets the stage for negative stereotypes to form.  I think prejudice is a natural human reaction in humans weather it is race, religion, beauty, or any other likewise category.  Most of us are intelligent enough not to play out our prejudices in racist ways.

I really hate this colorblind society that is being created and being sold as a so-called post racial society.  I hate when people claim they “don’t see color”!  Why the hell not?!  We are two different colors and two different cultures and they are different.  Why can’t we celebrate those differences?  Why can’t we stop attaching negative attributes to skin color?  I have female friends who are white.  They are beautiful women who are smart, funny, dynamic, good mothers, fun to be around, and I like them for who they are.  Saying they are white is merely a physical characteristic, not a summation of what they are, just what they look like.  If someone asked me about one of them, I can’t just say, “She is white” and you will know everything there is to know about her.  I have female friends who are black.  They are beautiful as well.  I can’t sum up who they are by merely stating their skin colors either.  That is why being colorblind and saying you don’t see color is bad.  I want you to see me.  All of me.  I want to see all of you too.  Yeah, I get mistaken for a white woman on the telephone and my old co-worker from Disney World named Kesha often shock people when she shows up and she’s a white girl.  Being white doesn’t automatically make one racist and being black doesn’t automatically absolve one from not being racist.

In America, the “white race” and “black race” are social constructs.  A list of stereotypes, usually perpetuated by the media, politics, selective hearing, racially motivated Catch-22s, self-fulfilling prophecies, and willful ignorance.  Sometimes I wonder will these divides last forever.  It seems that we take two steps forward then one step back.  I think that true America, people who have dreams of America actually being what she claims to be; a beautiful melting pot of races and cultures instead of oil and water in the same bowl, are sick of the racial divide in the country.  I know I am.

Black Men Can’t Win

Posted by Cleo on

I didn’t know all of that was going on, but even as a young child, I knew that I had something special having my father so involved in my life because so many other little girls my age didn’t. When my father passed away, many of my friends showed up and I realized that his presence in my life was a positive experience from my friends as well. I remember when I would have sleepovers, one of my friends who was kinda new to the group of us was timid around my father. After a few months and more sleepover than my mom probably wanted, she was running to greet my dad when he came home like the rest of us. So sad that other women and children never get the love of a father. I feel like we need to start a national campaign/network of involved fathers. “Nation Black Fathers Network” to really show the millions, yes millions of father who are there. We are 30 or 40 million strong as black ppl in this country, so surely we can make an impact by killing the stereotype and creating a network that will show and help men be better fathers. There are men who don’t know how to be a father who could benefit from the guiding hand of a veteran good father.

LaVena Johnson

Posted by Cleo on

We really need to arrest the government!

abagond's avatarAbagond

levana-johnson-silent-truth

LaVena Johnson (1985-2005), an American soldier, was the first female soldier from Missouri to die in the Iraq War. The Army called it suicide. Her parents say she was beat up, raped, shot in the head and then dragged to a storage tent that was set on fire to destroy the evidence.

There are at least 13 other such “suicides”.

LaVena Johnson was an honour student. She played violin. She lived in suburban St Louis, her father a doctor. By all accounts she was a happy soul. Her parents had hoped she would go to university. Instead, deeply affected by 9/11, she joined the Army, like her father and grandfather before her.

In May 2005 the Army sent her to Iraq.

On July 17th she talked to her mother by telephone. She seemed in good spirits. She talked about coming home for Christmas: “Don’t decorate the tree without…

View original post 402 more words