The Assassination of A Family

Try to imagine that your country has been targeted in a war which its' instigators claim is an humanitarian effort.  This isn't the first time in history that war has been termed "humanitarian" even though almost no war is humanitarian or humane.  For centuries leaders and states have claimed they needed to rescue a particular group or region, but often their motives were not altruistic but selfish and in their nation's own interests. 

Try to imagine that during the days and weeks that your small nation is being bombed by 20 or more other countries, you not only have to hold yourself together in the amidst of all the uncertainty and fear of what might happen next, but you also have to maintain courage for others such as your children. 

Try to imagine that late one night after one of your kid's birthday party the previous day, you are out late helping somebody and on your way back home you get a telephone call that your home has been bombed. 

I wonder sometimes how do you survive a war even if your body isn't destroyed by bombs or bullets.  How do you come out of it with any of your mind left intact?  

My mind is on another war again like it was for years on the one in Iraq.  I thought about the second Iraq War for all the years it grinded on.  In many ways it still isn't over.  Iraqis are still dying from bombings, but news about Iraq faded away from American TV news years ago.  Though Obama pulled out the troops the other year, the US has left a residue of itself behind with the world's largest embassy.  The residue is always left behind.  Ask several other countries in at least the last 65 years.  I still Tweet about Iraq occasionally on Twitter, but Libya's war in 2011 is more immediate for me now.  It supposedly ended last year, but that country is not the same as it was.  It is still very unstable, and so much bitterness, grief, and broken lives are left.  Its is a great tragedy that is not being talked about just like it wasn't talked about concerning Iraq or Afghanistan.  All is not well.

I have three Libyan Facebook friends.  Two sent me friends requests, and I sent the request to one who was a mutual friend of another Facebook friend who had been in Libya last year even up to the time when Tripoli fell and shortly afterwards.  I learned a little bit about his tragic story so I wanted to include him on my friend's list.  His name is Khaled K. Elhamedi.  He is the founder of the International Organization for Peace, Care and Relief (IOPCR) which was one of Libyan's biggest and most well known charities and NGOs.  On June 20th of last year his home in the town of Sorman was bombed by NATO forces in the middle of the night.  His pregnant wife, young daughter and small son who had just celebrated his third birthday the previous day were all killed.  Khaled was not at home at the time.  He had been away trying to help other victims of NATO's attacks.  Since Khaled is from a prominent Libyan family and NATO targeted anyone they felt might be close to or supported the Green (Jamahiriya) Libyan government, I would term it an assassination.  Other family, friends, and employees were assassinated that night in his home bringing the total number of dead to 13.  The house and several others in the neighborhood were demolished by bombing including his father's house. 

Since the murder of his family, Khaled  has struggled through his overwhelming grief to go on, and during this terrible process he has begun legal proceedings against NATO.  His website that details his actions is ICENA or International Coalition to Ensure NATO Accountability.  Its' Facebook page can be found here.  Besides these links that he sent me he also directed my attention to an article on Voltairenet, an account of what happened to his family: The Sorman Massacre.

Last week I first saw Part Two of a documentary, NATO's Gifts to the Children of Libya on my Facebook timeline.  I took the time to look at the entire short and heartbreaking documentary.  When I look at Khaled, his mother, and sisters I am astounded by their courage, that they would still keep trying to live.  I just don't think I would be able to keep going on.  However, my mother and late grandmother both have often said to me in the past that God will not put too much on us that we can't bear.   There is obviously some truth in it considering how some people can somehow wade through tragedy and still keep standing.  I feel it must be like carrying a mountain on one's back yet still attempting to climb another mountain. 

I have posted Parts One and Two of NATO's Gifts to the Children of Libya below.  NATO, the UN, and the US don't bother to keep accurate body counts. It is estimated that from 50,000 to at least 100,000 Libyans were killed and injured in the war.  Anywhere from a million to two million fled the country or were displaced.  It's going to be a long and very difficult process, but I hope that eventually justice will be done for Khaled Elhamedi's family and all innocents, civilians, the helpless, and the wounded who lived and died in Libya in that terrible and tragic year of 2011.  Khaled has asked that people continue to spread the word about what happened to his family and other children in Libya.  Lest we forget...

 

African vs. African-American

After some passing years I am re-discovering and focusing on my African roots again.  As I've written in a previous post, I consider myself to be an African in America even though my historical ties to Africa were cut a few centuries ago.  I was born in America, but genetically I will always be an African, and I refuse to deny it, be ashamed of it, or fear it.  

The first foreign country I lived in was in Africa.  In the last 9 years I've forged ties to Turkey and traveled and worked there many times.  Turkey was an episode in my life.  I appreciate the friendship I had with Turkish people, the acquaintances I made, and enjoyed working with Turkish students, but I am not Turkish.  There are some similarities in my family background to experiences found in Turkish culture (ie. close knit family on my mom's side, strict parents), but most non-Western cultures share some similarities, and even though I was born in the West my outlook is not completely Western.  Most of my life I've felt like an outcast and a hybrid.  It has been especially difficult for me being so different because I live in the American Deep South and I am also quite intellectual in my outlook which is something that's rather unique with most blacks and whites in the South and throughout America.  African-American culture is also quite dictatorial in its' views on conformity. Most African-Americans are very much in the box thinkers.  We are not going stray too far outside the herd. For me, to stray away from t the herd has made it a tough journey.  Still I have no regrets for refusing to conform.

From the first I've gotten along fine with Africans I've met. I was curious about them, and I was surprised that they were curious about me.  Perhaps they were because I didn't act like the "typical American."  I've gotten the comment from many foreign people that I don't act like the average or typical American. I am who I am.  It really is no act.  I was always different and felt out of place here.  I tried to conform in early middle school, but my attempt failed and from then on I've developed my own individuality and personality without even the fear of being alone.  I'm human and I get lonely sometimes, but I'd much rather be myself than compromise by putting on a mask.  

I ran across the above video on YouTube a few weeks ago. The young woman in it is of Ugandan and Jamaican parentage. Growing up she experienced a great deal of intra-racial prejudice from African-Americans.  

On social media I'm getting more and more followers and people on my friend's lists who are Africans. I follow a number of African and Afrocentric pages on Facebook.  I've started reading Afrocentric history and works by African writers once again.  

More and more Africans seem to be more visible online these days. It's a good idea for African- or black Americans (some of us don't like to be called African-American) to connect with them.  Africans reach out to me, and I reach back.  Many African-Americans have negative feelings towards Africans. Online I've encountered almost all the blame for slavery being lain at the door of Africans.  It used to be Arabs only, now dark skinned Africans are blamed. 

There are some whites who meddle and want to ease the blame from their history.  They are quick to point out to African-Americans that the Africans sold you into slavery.   Some of them do this whenever they see an American black who wants to seek their historical, cultural, and genetic identity.  I don't feel it's their business, but perhaps at the core of their words is a fear that blacks on the continent and in the Diaspora will eventually unite.  What might happen if they do? Oppressed people are best kept fragmented.  

Many Africans speak two or more languages. Often when they come to America they arrive to further their education they are very dedicated students.  Perhaps some whites fear that we will begin to value education and hook up with the Africans.  If we stop feeling that learning and education is "white," that would mean more competition between whites and blacks here.  

I first met Africans was when I was a university student.  The very first was my roommate. She was from Nigeria, and her father was a doctor.  I was a freshman at Spelman College, and in the freshman class only her, me, and one or two other girls were serious about why we were at the school.  Most of the others were mainly concerned with dating and partying.  Bola, was one of the most studious people I had ever encountered then or since.  In fact, she was a fanatic about studying, getting up early in the morning to hit the books before classes.  After classes she rarely came back to the dorm until late. She stayed in the library until closing time.   

Later in graduate school at the University of Georgia I met African students, some of whom were Ph.D. candidates. They were mainly from countries like Somalia, Malawi, and Kenya.  

Much later I was in Peace Corps in Botswana. I felt for the first time that I come to my true home. I felt so much pride to learn the African National Anthem in Setswana and to see black people controlling their own country where the whites were only the guests.  No one talked about color even against racist apartheid South Africa which was just next door.  The Africans and whites referred to each other by their nationalities. 

I met people in Botswana from African countries such as Ethiopia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana.  I was struck by the natural elegance in which the African women carried themselves. There was an aura and softness about them that many African-American women lack.  They were not boastful or seemed as if they were compelled to put on a big show that they were strong women. Some African-American women often declare that, "I'm a strong black woman,"  but I never heard any African woman say this.  I never  saw one African woman act like she felt she had to prove something.  I haven't been on the continent for years, but I don't seen such statements coming from African women in social media. The ones I've observed seem to have a quiet strength and knowledge.  

There is a pungent scene in the mini-series Roots when Kunta Kinte is being whipped by the white overseer because he refuses to relinquish his African name and take the slave name Toby.  Even though he is beaten unconscious Kunta says his African name up until the time he passes out from the pain.  Despite being kidnapped from his homeland and becoming a captive and a slave, Kunta Kinte tries his best to retain tiny remembrances and remnants of his culture close to him and in his memory.  He gives his only child an African name.  He never turned his back on his true home.  

For a brief time, back in the 1970s particularly, African-Americans tried to connect with the "Motherland" as many here referred to the continent.  Many men and women wore their hair in Afros, the bigger the better.  Some wore African inspired prints and dashikis. Some couples didn't want to dress in the Western way at their weddings.  They insisted on wearing African garb when they tied the knot.  For some the black existence didn't begin for them in America; they wanted to read about African history and the struggle.  They refused to accept the Hollywood version of ancient Egyptians and some even went so far as to say Jesus was black.  "Black is beautiful" and "Black Power" were charms that gave them confidence, pride, and a sense of hope.  

Now 40 or more years later we have regressed and are back where we came from. In many cases we are in a worse shape.  Many African-Americans are lost identity wise. So much of our so-called culture is based on negativity.  I believe a lot of this comes from unacknowledged despair.  We're devastated spiritually and mentally as a people. Western materialism is not the cure for us or anyone else, but we know nothing else to cling to.  Our things can't save us, make us whole or teach us how to be good husbands, wives, and parents. Families are the basis of any society, and in the African-America marriage and family is nearly extinct. 

There is a kind of silent war raging both in the white dominated culture and within us.  One of the worse aspects of this war is our denial, indifference, and hatred of our African roots. I remember when I was a child how some of the black kids used to make fun of Africans saying they were all ugly and jet-black.  The only African people they ever saw were in National Geographic or on TV. Africans were always described as primitive, warlike, or undernourished.  Their traditional faiths were seen as wicked and dangerous. 

When I met my first live Africans I was surprised how some of them looked like blacks in America.  I saw how some were very dark like the Somalis and Zambians,  but also so attractive and charming.  I'd learned years ago that skin color didn't determine physical loveliness.  I also was impressed how learned some of the Africans were.  Their accents were melodious and soothing.  They were like us blacks, but also very different. I had never seen whites or blacks in America with the kind of aura I sensed in the Africans.  I felt like to talk to them and enjoy their company continuously for days.

Now with social media, African-Americans and Africans have the opportunity to connect, but I doubt if most will.  From my experience most Africans will not be standoffish unless African-Americans behave that way. They will reach out to us. Now in some cases they won't and will even have an elitist attitude towards African-Americans.  However, this has not happened to me except one or two times.  This old article called African vs. African-American: A Shared Complexion Does Not Guarantee Racial Solidarity is still relevant and a must read.  

We have a president who is part African. Over 90% of African-Americans support him and many even have a cult-like worship for him.  Strangely even though some of us hate Africans, we love Obama unquestioningly. We either overlook, dismiss, ignore, are ignorant of, make excuses for any of his wrongdoing.  Obama shows very little sign that he identifies with his black or African side. Some of us make excuses and say with pride that unlike a lot of brothers who move up in the world he didn't marry a white woman or a light skinned black woman.  He married a dark sister, not realizing that a person can have scorn or distaste for an entire race, but will sometimes date or even marry one from that race for which he or she has racist feelings towards.  The one who is liked, loved or "loved," is seen as perhaps an exceptional case and less distasteful as the group he or she came from.  All of our posturing aside, most African-Americans like many Americans are politically naive and reckless while making choices in the political process. . Life just comes in a couple of shades, and that is all we can see or will allow ourselves to see.  

I feel one day we are really going to need the Africans. Our history did not begin with the brutality and crime of slavery. Our history goes back hundreds and thousands of years.  We should learn about it and be proud of it.   It's well past time to re-establish contact with our people and overcome our prejudices and racism against folks who bare some of the same DNA as us.  

In January I will begin trying to contribute my own part in rebuilding our connections with our people. I have asked one of the community centers here in town if I might teach a course using J.A. Rogers' first volume of World's Great Men of Color.  The community center director who is white unhesitatingly agreed to have me teach a course at the center when I presented him with my idea.   It will be a hard task of conquering indifference or dislike of Africans, but I am going to try.   Also I am fully aware that history is not interesting or important to a lot of people in this society.  Africa is overlooked, even by some of its' own born there.  

We live in an era when white Western culture dominates the world and worldview of many who aren't even white or Western.  I feel that my people need to start learning who they really are.  The time of shame and being whipped and beaten in our minds like Kunte Kinte needs to come to an end.  

Misplaced Compassion

I took a little break from blogging mainly because I was lazy about it.  Also I have a lot on my mind, but I am back now.  

I was just reading a book by African writer Bessie Head entitled A Woman Alone which is a collection of her musings about her life, life in general, life in Africa, life as an African, racism, colonialism; she packed a lot into a little book.  But Bessie Head wrote in that manner and she admits so in this book.  

There are a number of things she wrote in this book that have stayed with me.  I even dog-eared the pages where passages that touched me are located.  One passage says 'It seems to me that it is only the Afro-American, because of what they have suffered, who is capable of this deep compassion.'  She wrote this in her essay, "God and the Underdog: Thoughts on the Rise of Africa."  

I would say once as late as the beginnings and middle of my parent's generation we African-Americans had immense compassion for those who suffered, but as the doors real or imaginary opened for us, as we because more middle class or aspired to become so or move even higher to millionaire status, we lost our compassion and ability to identify with those who are less fortunate. This is common among all oppressed or unappreciated groups. Once they get a little more, they start looking down on those left behind. 

It has become even more critical for African-Americans with the election of the "first black president."  We have a president who bombs and is just as deceptive as all the rest before him, but since we have rather lost our souls and conscience as a people, we support him out of black pride or just intense silent hatred of whites.  We don't seem to realize anymore that loyalty and evil don't mix.  There is no need to feel compelled to support him if he is wrong.  But that is one of many minefields we as a people have allowed ourselves to walk unawares into, and because Obama is picked on so much by conservative whites we believe we must have compassion for him because we see our own plight in him.  Does he really deserve our compassion though since he is weak and refuses to bring up the issue of race in America?  He has skirted it for close to four years now.  I finally threw up my hands in disgust and horror last year with his endorsement of the bloodbath in Libya.  I had already lost most of my respect for him when he said we needed to turn over a new leaf in US history and forget about the war criminals from the previous administration. He knew the job requirements of his post is to be a war criminal and that eventually he would commit many outrageous acts.  Really there was nothing he could do since he was a member of that system, of that club.

So what is my point?  My point is African-Americans and many others today misplace their compassion. We will defend Obama or some millionaire or celebrity tooth and nail if they are berated.  We will defend some man or woman who brought hardship on themselves because of their reckless or immoral actions because we can "identify" with their actions and how badly they were treated.  We take the morally low road every single time and then complain about how life seems to get crazier and more uncertain by the day.  The more glamorous the moral and intellectual weaklings are the more we have compassion for their failings, because we have such a low standard now and despise anyone who tries to lift us out of our pig pens.  

Now where should our misplaced compassion really be directed?  For a start some of us have people right around us who are silently suffering, feeling inadequate, devalued, and lonely. But we often time feel they are too lowly for our concerns.  How come so and so won't extricate  his or herself out of their pity party?  I am just sick and tired of so and so and his or her depression. I am just too busy.  Hey!  We all have our problems. Get over it!  Aren't you supposed as a friend be entertaining me and keeping me on a high all the time?  I don't have time for your sadness and pent up anger. 

So in this time it's about being too busy or some empty gesture or expression.  Then we wonder when there is the surprising suicide.  Always I hear the same excuses, "I just wish I could have been there for so and so. He/she was there for me."   If only. If only.  If only.  Note the selfishness.  

I've also witnessed a new phenomenon.  I'm a person who loves to help others for unselfish reasons.  I had several examples when growing up that showed me that it's better to give than to receive: my mother's parents, my mom, my mom's sister, and reading children's Bible stories about Jesus.  I also had some really hardworking and selfless teachers in school. Curriculum wise they didn't have much to work with, but they (white and black) supported me since I was a hardworking student.  What I saw in the realm of unselfishness and loyalty remained with me and silently shaped me. 

But times began to creep along to the existence we're living in now, and I saw a big change.  Now I see a lot of people who are afraid if you reach out to them, so I discover myself drawing back, and I don't like that.  I've offered my ear to so-called friends whom I could detect had problems, and they rejected it.  I've gotten little in life that are normal rewards, but I'm still out there fighting and thinking about others who are having a hard time.  I need to think about me more, I admit, and strike a balance between concern for myself and others, but it will be hard to change how I was molded.  This is who I am.  I just happen to live in a place and time where it's arid intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally with many people.  But I feel I am the way God intended because I refuse to think that selfishness is the better route.  

Instead of our imaginary celebrity and famous friends, we need to think about the people around us who are hurting.  The country I live in is a warrior country that has been attacking places it can easily disrupt for a very long time.  This didn't start 12 years ago.  I as a person who believes in morality think everyday of the justification that is made to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people to the east of here.  I put myself in those people's shoes and wonder how I would feel, so I include those people I don't know in my concern and compassion too.  They are human. My compassion was extended a long time back outside my little world.  As a person who believes in and fears God (I commit sins too, but I know when I am wrong and regret it) I believe I am feeling the right way.  

Stop offering compassion to those who are contributing to the calamities of our times, and start offering it to the ones who deserve it whether near or far. 

Al Fateh Revolution 43 Years Ago Today

The Libya that once was for 42 years was swept away last year in a whirlwind.  According to  unorthodox reports, that is those that did not come from the mainstream media, what happened to Libya after being overrun by foreign backed militias and bombed by NATO is one of the great tragedies and betrayals of our time.  Now there is a media blackout, and the only way to get any idea of what is going on in Libya is through a scrap of information here or a scrap there.  The evidence of war crimes and atrocities by the rebels are on YouTube for the world to see, but much of the world doesn't know about them or even cares.  

I believe in the sovereignty of nations.  If you tell me how to run my house, that is an arrogant imposition. You have no right to suggest anything or impose.  If you tell me to get out of my house or force me away that is an invasion.  If you are a European nation including the US, which has a history of imposing its' will and values on other countries, that is racism of the highest order. It is imperialism. Whites do not have a monopoly on wisdom or how to do or run things.  They can be incompetent too.  The people of a given country must decide the political, social, and economic destiny of their country, not foreigners or even expatriates who no longer live there.  The current citizens who are grounded there should be able to decide their own fate and future.  

But I procrastinate in expressing what this post is really about. On this date in 1969 the Al Fateh Revolution occurred in Libya.  A group of young army officers who called themselves the Freedom Officers Movement staged a bloodless coup toppling the Libyan monarchy which favored the West.  The leader of the group was a 27 year old named Muammar al Gaddafi.  I will not write anymore than that.  Below are just a few things that will speak for themselves.  

One of Colonel Gaddafi's first interviews in 1969.

I like the pageantry of this celebration in Libya. Apparently it happened just a few years ago.  

Yes, I have read The Green Book by Muammar al Gaddafi.  I did last year.  This is my copy which originally belonged to my little brother.  I'm not sure if he ever read it, but he ordered it when he went through his Nation of Islam phase.  When Libya was being attacked last summer, I asked him if I could borrow his copy.  He gave it to me and said that I could keep it.  This is a book of very interesting ideas.  I suggest it be read, but only by people with an open mind that haven't been disturbed by years of conditioning into the present political system and also by propaganda about Gaddafi.  Reading it will get you more into the mind and ideology of Muammar Gaddafi the man than looking at news clips. The Green Book.  Read it and then decide.  

Freeing: Why I Closed My Facebook and Twitter Accounts

I did something very freeing, very liberating today.  I closed both my Facebook and Twitter accounts.  This is something I had mulled over for months and months.  I felt they were both huge distractions and in many ways futile.  The internet has its' uses and so does social media, but in the end a lot of it lacks depth.  

How many people are really friends on social media?  In real life it's difficult to gain genuine and honest friends that will sympathize and walk life's journey with you, be there when you need them. I gave much thought to this, and began to wonder why am I on here (Facebook and Twitter)?  My reasons were not good enough to keep me on. 

Social media is an outlet to procrastinate even more.  It helps to feed the ego on many levels.  I'm not eager to stroke anyone else's ego, and I want mine to be under control, so I'm not running to have mine stroked.  I don't like what these sites do to people in a lot of cases. It contributes in its' own way to the deadness of present day existence.  This "fast food" "get it while it's hot" thinking applied on social media really affects the brain in negative ways, I believe. It causes a kind of attention deficit disorder.   In the end we get less and less done the more time we spend on them.  Even if we're not posting regularly or just remain mute, lurking in the background, we're rushing to see what someone else is saying, doing, or posting.  I just don't have the time anymore.  For those with this kind of spare time and it doesn't tamper with their brains in a bad way, I applaud them.  

If you post important information, how many really read it and digest it?  I've noticed my reading online.  It's not as deep and thoughtful as when I'm reading books.  I do a lot of skimming to be honest. Even the majority of the articles I post on Twitter and Facebook I skim through more than actually read them.  

My personal thoughts that I post?  Who really cares in the end?  People read and move on in a herd or solo to the next quote, rant, piece of advice, junk reasoning.  It all goes up in a puff of smoke and is soon forgotten in a matter or minutes if not seconds.  

While I'm playing around on social media I could be finishing up and starting new magazine queries and sending off poems.  In the last four years I've started writing two books.  Both are on the shelf now along with my ideas, just collecting dust.  I'm going back to MY books, MY ideas.

I started to evaluate where I want to go with my writing offline in the last couple of months.  I think I have what it takes to become a very good writer.  This is not only my opinion, but this has come from some other people for a long time now.   Sure I need more polishing in the craft, but I feel I can get the rust off with diligent work and by staying focused.  I want to get paid for my work.  Social media is in the way at this point.  Plus I don't like the idea of wasting my time and enriching even more the rich owners of these sites all at the same time. 

Facebook will always be there to go back to if I want.  However, I really wish they would offer the option of erasing accounts permanently.  Perhaps I will go back to Twitter before its' expiry date in 30 days, but I plan to be frugal with my time on it, on both of them.  

It's  past time for getting busy and fanatical with my work offline. If I'm blogging on here, I can express myself more broadly.  I will get a smaller audience, but blogging is cathartic for me.  If the audience isn't honest, it's fine with me to just write for myself.  Still with blogging I will not go overboard.  I will keep my time minimal, posting once or twice a month as I have been doing all along.  I continue to heed the advice of a Facebook friend who is an author and used to write for The New York Times (I wouldn't want to work for that outfit though), to "stay away from the blogs if I want to be a serious writer." She's old enough to be my mother, and I've read one of her books which I really liked. It had a literary quality to it.  

Sure, in today's brave new world of writing, the internet's importance cannot be overlooked.  I respect that, and I will use the cyberworld to my advantage.  I will continue to utilize it and post my thoughts, but I will never use Facebook and Twitter the way I once did.

Self-Hatred and Dark Women Scorned

I'm posting two photos on this post with the hope I don't get in trouble because of copyright laws.  If someone (the owners of at least one of them) says anything, I will swiftly take them down.  

This is going to be a long, rambling piece, but this is my blog and not a scholarly paper.  In the end the overall subject matter will remain on the same road. If it sounds like I am generalizing, it is not my intention to, but to always say people are generalizing when there is a serious issue diverts from the importance of that issue. 

Last week a Facebook friend posted the photo below on his page.  The FB friend is  blogger and Middle Eastern analyst Sukant Chandan who sometimes appears on PressTV and Russia Today.  Sukant also writes and speaks against white supremacy and how it affects and cripples non-white populations.  Look him up on YouTube and check out his blog Sons of Malcolm. 

This photo generated a good deal of comment on his page. (Click to enlarge.)  I wish even more people would have commented.   Perhaps some felt it wasn't relevant to them, since the issue pertained to how a certain group of black men perceive certain types of  black women and black females in general.  Two comments that were posted stood out to me.  One was by a white female who commented that black women are considered less attractive than other women.  An Arab female said that she didn't consider many of the black entertainers in America, for example Beyonce, to be black. I can't fault her for obviously not knowing enough about the racial dynamics of this country. Most people don't take the time to dig deep pass the top soil.  She obviously is looking at the construct of race from a Middle Eastern perspective where a lot of Arabs have black ancestry because of the concubinage of African women. This is something many of them seem to be in denial of, but I know some of their history, and I have been told aspects of it by Africans and read and heard about their lineage from other resources.  What the young lady might not know is that in America's past even the minutest amount of African ancestry translated over into a person being black. Even if she looked at the present day, the president is always referred to as the "first BLACK president" when he is racially mixed and very rarely pays attention to the needs of black folk.  He grew up and went to school in white surroundings and now works in the interest of powerful whites.  There are few blacks on Wall Street.  None of the mega banks are black controlled.  The state of Israel on which he pledges undying and unquestioning support like all presidents before him is not a black nation and is currently making it loud and clear they don't want black skin refugees from Africa to darken their white nation.  Last year he had a hand in the bombing of Africa and the killing, rape, and displacement of blacks in Libya.  Most whites and blacks in this country see him as black.  I really don't see him as fully black.  But to separate racially mixed blacks into a separate group only alienates them into a tiny isolated group because most whites will never accept them as white.  Blacks have always generally accepted and welcomed them. As for Obama's rejection, we just make believe that he doesn't ignore us. For us blacks to deal with such pain and the realization that once again there is "no one who really cares about us," we stay in a pretend realm where we tell ourselves that he is one of our own at least, almost a member of the family, and as long as he's a first "one of us" we're happy.  Crumbs are an accepted part of our existence.

What do you think of the photo above of these guys and their statements?  I don't listen to their music.  The one I know most about, but even that is miniscule, is Kanye West.  He came on the scene clean cut, singing about Jesus Walks, and now his music has turned disturbing and shallow like much of what we call music in this culture. I only remember Ne-yo's first song because I liked it for its' rather soft and romantic sound.  It was a love song, but I don't even recall its' name.  

Do the comments on the photo attributed to them surprise me?  No, because my eyes are open to the world.  Black women are the most overlooked and less appreciated group in America, and because most of the world has been brainwashed through the media into believing only one standard of beauty exists, women who are dark everywhere is generally less valued.  Looking at the entertainment business worldwide, the female singers and actresses in America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia even occasionally in Africa have similarities in look. They mostly have the same hair length, similar hair color and hair styles, the dresses and other garb are close to the same in style, the makeup is applied the same, the same body types.  It's all cookie cutter images like men who wear the standard business suit and an tie. 

Western culture applauds sameness, and this sameness is a white ideal.   My mother says that everyone wants to look like a Barbie Doll now.  If you look past the lust of wanting these "paragons of beauty" or wanting to be like them, you will see that what the media puts before us has conditioned us to like basically same image.  

Are Kanye, Ne-yo, Lil Wayne's alleged words an anomaly?  No.  Many black guys have aspired to get a "yellow," "red bone," "high yalla," "mulatto," "light skinned" black woman for a long long time.  Nothing new there. What is stunning are the amount of black men rejecting black women now.  Could what "influential" black guys say and do have a bearing on the average black joe's perception about which kind of woman is desirable and which kind is not? Mostly certainly. A lot of black people view what they see on TV as timeless wisdom.  They don't understand that the TV provides not only entertainment but propaganda. Sure there are nuggets of truth and reality scattered here and there on the tube and in movies, but generally what the media and entertainment have to offer creates a spiritual and intellectual paralysis.  

Light skinned black women with long hair have been the trophy women long before this generation began to say openly on YouTube how they bear a distaste for black woman or very dark "sisters."  Black ball players and entertainers have for quite awhile married light skinned black women. Once racial laws changed and blacks could marry other races in this country, black ball players and entertainers married white women.  I have often thought it was nice that actors like Denzel Washington and Samuel L.Jackson married women who didn't have that "little extra," light skin or whiteness.  Like some say, "they married dark sisters."  Perhaps they are secure in themselves and their identity.  

I don't advise people on who to date or marry. People are free to date and marry whomever they want, but there is no denying some don't marry out of love or respect.  Some marry or date for selfish reasons, to make a statement, rebellion, sex, to try out something different, to garner attention, and the one that's been going on throughout history, finances (economic security). They feel a certain type of woman on their arm will bring the reward of more acceptance and envy.  It becomes not a quiet testimony to genuine love, but a contest and a game, an ode to selfishness and the  usage of another human being.  This applies also to women. I'm not a black female male basher.  I note faults in both sexes.  Sadly we women do not have the moral high ground either.  Too many of us have our agendas and hidden motives too.  Like the old Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack song went, "Where is the love?"

I'm very concerned about what these guys supposedly said and how much this kind of thinking have over taken some black male minds. These guys have allowed themselves to be transformed into the Stepin Fetchits of our times and don't even realize it.  The slave and Uncle Tom acts are still going on, but in more sophisticated and or raunchier forms.  It's sad, but what is even more disturbing is when someone like Halle Berry, considered a great beauty, admitted in a Reader's Digest article that even she had battled with self-esteem issues about her looks and that she feel most black women in America felt downtrodden in that area.  I'm glad she was honest because it is not easy being a black woman in America.  It takes a lot of strength to maintain a sound mind and heart here. 

Off the scales and charts disturbing and disheartening was an article that Psychology Today ran last year by Satoshi Kanazawa who is a writer and works at the London School of Economics.  Psychology Today published “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”  and then because of a fierce outcry against it removed the article from its' website.  They later apologized and fired Kanazawa.  Black women can't win for losing. Even the Japanese guy had to get on our backs.  I phoned their offices in New York to complain.  Kanazawa gets a high from political incorrectness and outrageous comments no doubt.  In a way I can stand people like him who are openly racist more than those who pretend to appreciate a group.  It's much more difficult to figure out a counterfeit liberal at the beginning than an neo-conservative.  Neo-conservatives and conservatives most of the time don't try to play it both ways to the extreme that some fake liberals will.  

At least Kanazawa was open about his brainwashing and that he was trying to peddle bigoted nonsense as scientific theory.  But truly how many worldwide really feel this way about black women and other dark women of color, but will never voice it in public?  How many women worldwide are traumatized and broken because they can't look like a white woman. I like to know my enemy and as fast as possible. Until then I keep out my mental magnifying glass at all times.  

What is even more tragic is how little has changed.  Listen to what Malcolm X said 50 years ago. 

A person's honor and dignity should be right up there with love of God and family.  It's not about following a group because in some groups there is misguidance and we end up having to compromise ourselves. Ask yourself.  Are you doing your own desires or are you permitting yourself to be  programmed?  I see a lot of intense self hatred in groups across the board.  I've known about Indians using skin bleaching creams for a long time.  I was a little surprised because skin bleaching was popular with some black people in my parent's day.  A few months ago I read that a skin whitener is being marketed in India, so women can bleach their private parts. Self hatred will drive people to ridiculous, humiliating, and even dangerous lengths.  Skin bleaching has also reached parts of Africa.  NPR ran this article in 2009 about the globalization of skin whitening. 

Darker young women worldwide are feeling less desirable, being rejected for natural or fake blondes, silently existing in a state of depression because white is the standard of beauty.  Years ago when I was in Botswana, a Zambian friend made a statement that would completely transform my thinking. What she said would be shocking to the person of an average mindset.  My friend and her husband were expecting a baby. Both were charcoal black, but I thought they were so cute.  I just loved them to death and enjoyed their company. Barbara was so full of life, and her husband John was a little gentleman who was very friendly and helpful.  My friend said one day that she hoped the her baby would be as black as pitch.  Now that was a radical statement that has stayed with me ever since.  Before I met them I had already dated a Somali student when I was in college. He was very black with aquiline features, a goatee, and what blacks here would call "good hair."  I thought he was gorgeous, and that accent...  He wrote my name for me in Arabic. I might still have the strip of paper he wrote it on somewhere.  Plus he was a truly educated and sophisticated man who was working on his Ph.D. He introduced to my first African writer, Chinua Achebe. 

I don't talk much about my private life, but I will here for a little to get my point across. In Botswana I also dated a Zambian that was charcoal complexion with light hazel colored eyes.  Usually I like men who are on the extreme sides of my complexion, much darker or lighter.  But in the end what is attractive to me is a man's character, mind, ability to maintain an interesting conversation, and the kind of speaking voice that he has, not his appearance.  It takes maturity to get past the exteriors, and most people don't have that capability since the media and world has shaped so many to behave like Pavlovian dogs.  

I've also dated a red haired Turk. At first I didn't find him attractive because he was too light in my opinion, but his looks grew on me. I don't know how sincere he was, but he said he found me beautiful. He also didn't have a problem with my natural (Afro) hair.  Many "brothers" over here would have a problem with my hair.  

Though Turkey is probably more racially tolerant for black people than many places, there is the issue there of color and class with some Turks.  In Turkey I was told by other Turks that the really shallow Turkish men were obsessed with blonde hair and blue or green eyed white women.  Russian women are highly prized. I flew back to the states a few years ago, and the person who sat beside me was a young Russian woman who lived in Florida. We talked to each other most of the way back, something that never happens when I sit next to "my fellow Americans.". I've had lively conversations with Turkish men and women on planes, a Nigerian, an Ethiopian, a Jew from Azerbaijan, a Russian, most of the people from other countries I've sat beside, but I've been beside one African-American and an East Asian, and like all the white Americans I sat next to they were silent the entire trip, closed off into themselves. Well, the young Russian woman was coming back to the states from Turkey too just like me, and she got on the subject of Turkish men and how she wasn't interested in going back there anymore because she was harassed too much. Some people tend to be in the unrequited love thing...  I don't know about other Russian women, but that one was not interested.  When I worked in Turkey I'd look at some of the Turkish girls and women who dyed their hair blonde, and I thought they were less attractive than their counterparts who didn't color their black or dark brown hair.  

On the Arab side and according to an Iraqi Tweep I follow, the white woman of choice among some Arab men are English and German women... Another blogger and Tweep (we mutually follow each other) Sarah, who is also Iraqi,  wrote about skin and hair lighteners in Arab cultures in her post Arabs & "The Marriage Fetish."  

Really a mind afflicted by self hatred because of an acknowledged or subconscious desire  to be a white person is a sad and diseased mind.  I have rebelled completely against this outlook.  I pledged years ago I would never spend money to have my hair permed again.  I love the texture of my African hair.  It's what God gave me.  How dare I despise what God bestowed on me.  I am a proud African person.  The title "black" as applies to me is denigrating and racist.  I have to put up with the term, but it is out of my soul now and is not a part of my identity anymore.  I am a proud African woman.  I go to the people who accept me.  Most of the Africans I've known over the years have, and I feel that I am genuinely welcomed and accepted by them.

No one defines me, no black man, white man, Japanese man, etc.  No one can force me to try and transform myself into their desired image.  If any man cannot appreciate me as my natural self, there are other human options on the planet for them.  Women who don't want to deal with my concept of pride and love to debase themselves on every level, might not want me as their friend either.  

Dignity is one of the biggest missing factors today.  I'm not worried about dealing  with a people all the time who looks down on me and whose ancestors oppressed mine.  I'm not worried about socializing with them or explaining myself to them.  If your definition of self worth has to come from being liked, being like, and being with white people all the time, you need to start asking yourself why do I have much intense self-esteem issues and self hatred.  I live in an era I thought I'd never live to see where scorned people are begging their former colonial masters and those who have killed and maimed their brothers and sisters and co-religionists just a few years ago  to come and bomb their homelands.  What is this madness?  

Sukant Chandan, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this post tries to educate people about the issue of white supremacy on his blog, Twitter and Facebook page.  I appreciate what he does for not only black people but for other people of color.  Now I'm not saying all white people are white supremacists.  I have a few decent ones on my Facebook and Twitter pages who speak out.  One or two even live in the US. I love people like them who are brave enough to be open about the facts and know what's going on.  But my concerns are with my own people and other people of color who want so badly to be honorary whites.  Please. Stop humiliating yourself.  Love yourself. Love your own people.  No, unrequited love is not the best kind.  It's degradation, and you wonder why you exist in a perpetual state of depression which you even refuse to realize that you're in.  

I am very pleased, gleeful, ecstatic when I see people of color taking charge of their self concept and loving their dark skin, curly hair, everything that sets them apart from being white.  Please look at this dark Indian lady's blog.  She's trying to spread her self confidence around to young Indian women who are depressed and hating themselves because in India even some of the song lyrics tell the dark ones you aren't good enough.  (Thanks Facebook friend Rasheedah Mullings Dagkiran for posting the link to the Dark and Lovely blog on your page and encouraging me to share it widely.)  

Every white person is not beautiful or handsome.  They don't have a monopoly on good looks.  There is beauty in every group, but beauty fades and if character is not there, the once beautiful woman or handsome man is the complete living dead.  There is nothing there.  Nothing left.  

It's not about the whites being the best on every level either. Their group has  held the reins of power for close to six centuries now.  They have the tools of promotion and subversion in the media, politically, technologically,  financially, and militarily to put out this false projection that they are superior humans on every level.  They are not gods, though some want us to believe they are. 

I look at some of the wisdom and literature from Africa and other Eastern cultures. When most whites in Europe were illiterate 800 years ago, Africans in Timbuktu were writing and reading manuscripts and books.  Some of the slaves brought to America could read and write in Arabic and used the script to also write in their indigenous languages.  Europeans not infested with religious bigotry and racism studied in Moorish Spain to broaden their intellect 1000 years ago.  Ancient Egyptian, Ethiopian, Persian, and Chinese cultures were advanced when most Europeans were in barbarity.  The Europeans (including white Americans) are new on the scene, and they have borrowed and stolen profusely from other cultures without having given anyone credit except themselves.  

Now there are white people I like, but I see their culture as colorless, tasteless, and just lame in a lot of cases.  Sorry, but I'm just being honest.  There is little or nothing to draw me into their conversation or jokes. You'd rather I'd be honest, wouldn't you? But perhaps you wouldn't.  Uh oh!  She's being an uppity one.  Perhaps I am...  I have known and been good friends with some white Europeans though, and I've enjoyed their company.  They were knowledgeable and knew a great deal about the world, but I think the ones I've been close to were perhaps a little exceptional.

As for the self hating Arabs and Muslims. What happened in Libya last year came about partially because of self hatred that a small group of expatriates and exiles held against themselves.  Of course, there is a vast variety of issues which helped to bring Libya down, but when I learned about the pogroms against black Libyans and sub-Saharan migrant workers trapped in Libya, I tried to investigate the situation with the few materials I could find.  

Colonel Gaddafi had moved over to the African fold, and a lot of Libyans outside Libya and some inside didn't like that.  Even his son Saif al Islam said in a lecture at the London School of Economics a couple of years ago that his father had leaned towards sub-Saharan Africa and more away from the Arabs because the Arab people are stubborn and difficult to deal with.  

Gaddafi embraced his African side.  His dad was dark, so why should he hate a part of himself?  To deny half of himself would have been schizophrenic thinking.  You can see his mom and dad briefly here  in an interview he did in 1976 on the BBC.  

American media rarely ever shows black people outside the US unless they're in sub-Saharan Africa.  They rarely show black people in Europe or the Middle East.  They never showed Gaddafi with black people near him or with him. When he came back on the scene here in 2009 and the West pretended to have allowed him into the club, it came out that the now elderly Gaddafi had female body guards.  There were snickers and giggles that Gaddafi was as mad as ever, but really he had the last laugh. For years he'd had female body guards.  Libya even had a female military academy.  Gaddafi's "Amazons" were not an ancient Greek idea but a throw back to the female warriors and bodyguards of some rulers in West Africa. Some historians say that the Greeks even borrowed from African culture.  Ex-slave, abolitionist, and traveler Olaudah Equiano said in his 18th century autobiography that the Greeks he saw in Ottoman Turkey danced in a way that reminded him of dances his tribe in Africa had danced.

Apparently not only was Colonel Gaddafi a military man, but he also had a masters in history.  If you listen without bias to his talking, especially his speech at the UN in 2009, you will see that he was fascinated by history and knew history.  It was never talked about here that he was a co-founder of the African Union.  It was never talked about on the news about his projects to help Africans.  There are many photos on the internet with him and other darker skinned Africans.  It was never mentioned here in the mainstream media that he apologized for the Arab and Muslim role in slavery.  No other Arab or Muslim leader had cared enough or been honest enough to do this.  A lot of North African and Middle Eastern people didn't like Gaddafi for his outspokenness.  They also didn't like him because he pushed his Arab side of the world deeper into Africa when the others except perhaps Iran were racing to be carbon copy Europeans and Americans.  In a recently published book of essays called The Illegal War on Libya, T. West writes in his essay American's Black Pharoah and Black Genocide in Libya:

Qaddafi...embraced black Libyans as well as rights for females, unlike many of the Arab states aligned against the Jamahiriya government.  He was proud of this heritage and those Libyans who hated him sometimes reflected that hatred by calling him "Friz Head."  But as Qaddafi acknowledged in a satellite feed speaking to members of the Nation of Islam in the 1990s, "You see, your brother, Muammar. You see, they do not like me, see.  And this is because..." [At that point, he pulled off his kufi (his African cap), grabbed some of his hair, and continued, "...my hair is like your hair. You see, they do not like this...."  Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has also been brave enough to declare his African heritage openly.  

Just like many blacks hate and are ashamed of their naturally curly hair that just needs a little extra work (more moisture and regular washings) the Arabs were not happy with Gaddafi's fluffy and curly Afro. Some Africans in East Africa had worn huge (what we call) Afros long before they became the style in the 70s in the US. The hairstyle was a revolutionary statement before we even knew about it. 

Today black people in America are close to the top of the list of global self-haters.  We were on the right path in the 1970s, but the 70s are long past.  Despite our disconnect from Africa, we were seeking Africa back then. Now we love black women like Beyonce with her dyed, straighten hair with blonde highlights and scorn her little sister Solange's "nappy" hair.  Solange has been ridiculed by critics for having her hair like a "homeless person." Hmmm.  So with blacks, Middle Easterners, North Africans and others it's not only about racism but socioeconomic status too, huh?   I hear you, and this African woman knows where you're coming from too.  You think you are free, but you are in some real bondage.  Slavery is not always visible shackles.  I'm seeing too that people who have so much self degeneration have a common outlook not only with the people they want to be like (whites) but also with the ones they scorn...  I applaud the people who haven't fallen into this trap.

In conclusion I want to show you Lil' Kim. Please Google images of her over the years and you will see a drastic transformation. 

 I have never listened to her rap music.  I saw the following photo on a black consciousness page on Facebook. 

This is tragic.  People were viciously criticizing her.  I left a comment that I felt so sad to see this and it really hurt.  It always hurts me as a black woman to see black women like Lil Kim go nearly naked to get famous. The stereotype has long been that black women were easy and prostitutes.  It's painful to see people fall into stereotypes so racists can talk and say,  "You see they're so predictable.  I knew they would do that. Yeah, that's them."  But for me, I really don't care what a racist thinks or seek his or her approval.   I am worried about my people being destructive to themselves to get ahead, to be praised, this erasure of themselves, this mental incineration.  At the same time this affects the rest of us who are fighting tooth and nail to maintain our dignity.  

The entertainment industry does this to people, and it's worse on women, and for women of color it's devastating.  If you can't be the epitome of white female beauty, you must have yourself chiseled on, your color erased, your African hair denied, your eyes put out not in the literal sense the way the Byzantine Greeks did to their enemies or deposed rulers, but your eye color and psychic eyesight must be obliterated. You must be blinded and erased on every level. The ultimate aim is for the male and female peons, the spectators sitting back in lust to think, "I want her or I want to be like her."   They're so worried about the meaningless and the deranged that they never see what the real issues are.  This is what the big folks want... 

I didn't see anyone comment on the thread about the photo of Lil' Kim that she looked good.  We're pretty far gone as a people, but I guess maximum artificiality isn't quite appealing just yet.  Lil' Kim is a pseudo-white humanoid now.  Nevertheless, instead of bashing her, we people of color should be weeping for her, others, and ourselves.  Those of us who refuse to be dictated to and love who we are need to be out trying to open one or two eyes; this also includes myself now that I see how critical the need is to try to get people to flee ignorance and self hatred and denial.   From what I'm seeing and hearing everything is looking more and more like it's a cult, the cult of white supremacy.

In the end love who you are, what God created.  Realize there are many forms of beauty.  Love and embrace people for the right reasons.  The concepts that too many of us allow to drive our lives are meaningless and false in the end.   

The Difference Between African-American and African Tweeps

I’m sorry if anyone who is black in this country is offended that I might refer to you as an African-American. I'm not ashamed.  I've said before on here I now go solely by "African" and proudly so. Many are ashamed of, hate or dismiss Africa, and don't want the title of even "African-American."  There is no nationality, country or continent called "Black."  You're keeping yourself in limbo actually by calling yourself just "black."  You're going by a label someone imposed on you.  And believe me, there are some American types who want to keep you confused and in limbo because as long as you're separated from your essence and origin you will remain confused and ultimately less of a threat intellectually and politically here or internationally.  I don't think many other hyphenated Americans are in this much self denial (there are the Michelle Malkins), but I don't have any statistics to back up this argument.  I've even heard some older black people say they are "American" not "African-American."  Old people can be confused too.  Confusion is not just the dominion of the young because there are some young people who are far more socially and politically conscious than their elders.  We live in times of confusion and massive triviality, and it's spreading.  

I've notice this confusion and triviality on Twitter in the Tweets of a few too many African-Americans versus Africans on the continent. Now there are some aware (conscious) African-Americans Tweeps, but they're in a tiny minority.  A sizable amount of Africans often Tweet things of more importance than my people here who too often seem to be into what's on TV, relationships (usually the failed or abusive kind), Tweets cluttered with raunchiness, or just posting sheer mindlessness.  I have to wonder if they even know the meaning of some of the one, two, or three word sentences they post. I certainly don't.  There are also the black Twitter prostitutes, cleavage and more, who appeared after the white Twitter prostitutes.  We as a people love to pick up the worse behavior of the whites.  The few good ideas they have we tend to ignore.  This has been going on a long time.  It's time for a change, and I'm not talking about the Obama kind.  Sadly, fake change and crumbs is all we feel we deserve as a people.

I probably have more Africans who follow me and I follow them back on Twitter than African-Americans.  That's fine with me, but it also makes me feel a little blue.  My Tweets are probably too international for the tastes of those from here.  I am also highly critical of the US domestically as a "culture" and internationally as a self-proclaimed human rights leader. No, I am no cheerleader for here.  I know the past and present history of this country very well. Yes, we have patriotic blacks too, but they don't generally post the US flag everywhere and love guns with an outrageous passion, but these types tend to get a violently allergic reaction at the thought of getting to close to our cousins in the Motherland. Does it mean we have to go back to Africa?  God forbid!  No, but you could move beyond Obama and Tyler Perry in your thinking. There is a world outside of America, you know, but perhaps you don't.

Twitter was once seen as the more intellectual relative of Facebook.  There are some highly intelligent people on Facebook, and a few of them happen to be my Facebook friends.  Everyone on Facebook is not on there just for play or for show.  Recently with the so-called Arab Spring there are people or groups who have popped up on these two most famous social network sites who promote killings and all out war, especially in the case of Libya and Syria, so it goes to show that Facebook and Twitter can become whatever you want it to be...  However, I prefer mine to be beyond the usual. I think if people can use them for killings, sweet nothings, and the mediocre, they can also be used to promote meaningful thought, wisdom, and information.

People might say that so many African-Americans Tweet lobotomized thought because their lives are not as difficult as Africans in Africa.  Perhaps this is somewhat true, but so much of African-American life is a sea of confusion and in shambles in this country.  That we would be Tweeting nothings and the grotesque is sad while many Africans are Tweeting substance. Some of the Africans have a more international awareness in many cases than many African-Americans.  Some also have a very deep understanding of what is happening in their own countries and on the continent. There is an extremely high level of sophistication in Tweets by Africans like @MrBasabose among others. He happens to be one of my favorites.  I actually learn from his Tweets.

I have felt for a long time that despite all the problems and perils, African-Americans and Africans need to connect more.  Here in America too many of us live in an isolation of ignorance.  It's a solitary confinement of confusion, propaganda, and eternal schoolboy and schoolgirl thought.  I would say 10% to at most 20% of the US population is sophisticated about how the world works, but even in my encounters with people here with degrees I see a lot of willful ignorance. It's chic to be ignorant in America even if you have a diploma.  I see it in other groups too, but here it's abysmal. 

It's far overdue that more African-Americans begin investigating and connecting with our people back home and those who have come over here and haven't lost their identity. As a people we are in some cases in a state of ravage far worst than Africans when you look at the state of our families and communities.  We've lived through a special and hidden war and not too much is left. It's time to rebuild and get back on the road we were on in the 70s. We were finding our way back then, but something happened. We've lost a whole generation. 

Even if we can't connect with live Africans there is the virtual universe where many of them will welcome us if we are willing to change our attitudes and overcome the poisoned lies and myths we have been told for too long. We must overcome our own self-hatred and suspicion and then we will be willing to connect with our people across the sea. When I was in Botswana years ago through Peace Corps I was asked why don't black Americans come here.  The whites do, but they never do.  We want more black Americans to come. 

We need to begin thinking about connecting with people who really accept us, not scratching at the door of folks who continuously one way or the other reject us or pretend to accept us out of guilt or as the fad of the day.

I've generalized some here, but I've also told about what I've witnessed.  I hope you get my point.

Unfinished?

Yet again I've changed my mind about what I would post on this blog.  I have several titles and portions of blog posts stored in the drafts section of this blog.  I was going to write about observations I've made of behavior on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, but when I was looking through my poetry notebook tonight to add a poem to my poetry blog, I noticed an unfinished poem I'd started.  I don't know if it will lie dormant and unfinished or whether a lightning strike of ideas will come and I will extend it. 

The unfinished poem I was looking at has the title "Dear Sisters".  It's basically a letter to African-American women, my sisters on the African continent, and my other sisters in other parts of the so-called Third World, the places that have been colonized and raped repeatedly for several centuries now, the places where the lie was put out that the people must be civilized even though they had already been civilized centuries before.  Individuals and whole civilizations are conditioned into low self-esteem and self-destruction, so in my own tiny way with my few abilities I want to cut some links in the chain.  

I will say here and now, I do not and have never considered myself to be a feminist.  I am not a middle class white woman.  A one size fits all white, American, northwestern European female template is not the remedy for all women on this planet.  In some of our cultures, far back, especially in African cultures, women already had strength and the right kind of freedom.  Debauchery and chaos is not freedom.  Being liberated into self-destruction and shame is not freedom. Losing the essence and nature of a female to become a pseudo-male is not freedom.  Emasculating your men is not freedom. Morals, intellect, grace, dignity, appreciation of beauty, wisdom, maturity, sense of duty without complaint are all the things our foremothers had.  We didn't have to be taught by a European woman how to live. So why this questioning and confusion about who we really are and what we can be?  We already IS. We don't have to be taught.

I've seen how the women's liberation model has in some ways been a catastrophe in the African-American community. Our family structure has dissolved itself.  Many African-American women feel they don't need a man.  We feel we can go it always alone and don't need protection.  And now we have no protection as a group now.  A war hasn't killed our men like it has in some places, but in America there has been and still is a special and secret war. Not too long ago I read a comment on an article about black male and female relationships posted by a racist troll who said that no one wanted black women and that we are so "butt ugly" that even our own men were abandoning us for white women. When I see or read the blatant and see the subtle racism, I go more within myself and realize the dangers to my people and others.  This country and the world is not post-racial. That disingenuous slogan about here and if it is applied anywhere is laughable and highly dangerous.


I started rediscovering Africa again last year during the Libyan war and seeing on YouTube the lynching and butchering of blacks there. I read the stories of survivors and witnesses. My journey as an African (not an African-American) of the diaspora began 20 years ago when I was in Peace Corps in Botswana.  What happened in Libya on all fronts changed me and forced me to look within.  Right now I am reading a book called Introduction to African Civilizations by John G. Jackson, edited by the great Pan-Africanist scholar John Henrik Clarke. I was embraced in Africa.  I now have both proud Africans as Facebook friends and followers on Twitter.  I am looking and searching for the truth about my people.  I am also drawing parallels between what happened to Africa when the Western European first penetrated it and what is now happening in the Middle East and Africa. The only thing is the guns are just bigger and the tricks are just slicker. The destruction of these civilizations are starting again, only this time the whole world might not survive.  

So on to my little unfinished poem.  It's a letter. Let's see how it goes.  Perhaps it's already complete.


Dear Sisters
My dear African sisters of the Diaspora 
and my sisters on the other side of 
the powerful seas, you too of other proud 
and long traditions now under assault.
We need to walk in beauty again and abolish
any alien way, any abnormality that lessens us 
as the beautiful daughters of God,
we sisters and lovers of true men.
We need to splash ourselves
in the rose water of beauty and 
genuine femininity.

Robert Merle's Book Ahmed Ben Bella

Robert Merle's book Ahmed Ben Bella was written over forty-five years ago.  I finished it a few days ago. Ahmed Ben Bella was a freedom fighter for the Algerian people against French colonial rule, a Pan-Arabist and Pan-Africanist who was the first president of Algeria.  He died two months ago on April 11th at the age of 93.  Ben Bella was charismatic and smart.  He spent many years in jail and exile, but in the end he was revered as an elder statesmen in Arab and African countries.  He was only president for about two years when his close friend overthrew him in a coup.  He was a socialist and devout Muslim.  

Robert Merle did fifteen audio taped interviews with Ahmed Ben Bella in 1963, lasting from two to three hours.  These interviews were formulated into the book Ahmed Ben Bella which is told in the subject's own words.  Ben Bella's story of his life is simple, moving, and sometimes almost poetic.  As a young person he saw all the male members of his family, his father and brothers, die long before himself.  His father was a fellah which is a peasant farmer. He also owned a business.  When Ben Bella was growing up Algeria had been ruled by the French for many decades, and the Algerians were treated by the colons or French settler population in ways similar to how blacks were treated in the US during Jim Crow.  Most Americans raised on hearing all the time about the Arab-Israeli conflict would find interesting that Ben Bella said the Jewish and Muslim populations in Algeria were actually quite close.  Algerians found themselves not only oppressed, but they were also culturally and linguistically colonized because many could speak very little of their own native language which is Arabic.  Ben Bella himself remained throughout his life more fluent in French than in Arabic, a fact which very much pained him. 

The turning point in Ben Bella's remarkable life was when he was a school boy.  A French teacher of his insulted Islam one day in class, and he was so outraged that he spoke out.  His bravery nearly got him suspended from school, but in the end he remained, however, his outlook about his country's situation had changed forever.  From that time on he grew determined to stand up for his people and perhaps someday witness their freedom.  

Near the end of the book I came across some points that were real eye openers to me and got me to really ponder things that are now happening in Africa and the Middle East, especially with the revolutionary (more like counter) cataclysm that started last year called the Arab Spring, the fierce wave that I believe will eventually destroy most of the Muslim and Arab world because outside forces led by the US are using young and naive Muslims, and those who don't really know their Quran to cause internecine fighting that will ultimately smash their societies and cultures. I believe it is the same thing that was done to the Native American, the African and others who have been victims of aggressive Western European culture for the last 600 years.  The division and conquest of the Muslim and Arab world has begun, and I take it very seriously when people like Tony Blair say that Islam must be eliminated. I'm not Muslim, but I believe the plan to eradicate Islam is very real.  

When Ben Bella and his people were in the midst of their struggle, the situation was very different among Muslims and Arabs than now.  Today Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa seem to be fractured, more and more disunited, sheep that are easily picked off by wolves, happily cooperating with people pretending to be altruistic, but who really want their destruction. It seems to me that they lack confidence and vision. Their youngsters seem confused and overly eager to be embraced by people who only look down on them or want to manipulate them. They seem to lack the spirit, steadfastness, moral backbone, and confidence of an Ahmed Ben Bella. Ben Bella said this about the Arab countries during Algeria's war for independence:

Egypt had given us immense assistance from the start, and all the Arab countries helped us to a lesser degree.  And I mean all the Arab countries, including even the least progressive ones such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The charming Queen Dina of Jordan even lent us her yacht to transport arms to the Moroccan coast... (pg.95)

The counter-revolution in Libya happened last year, and it turned out to be horrifically violent with US/NATO and other countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar supporting and aiding rebels who not only slaughtered and killed the average Libyan but who also targeted the minority black Libyan population.  Months ago I read about signs being placed around Libya saying the slaves (meaning the blacks) must be driven out.  I heard a young Libyan in London in an interview tell that he had noticed how some Libyan people had changed on a visit home. They had become more selfish.  Other sources said that the biggest problem was with Libyan expatriates who hadn't lived in Libya for years and some of Libyan descent who were not even born there. The Libyans of Ben Bella's generation were very different. Ben Bella had nothing except praise for them.  

Of all the Arab countries, I like Libya the best.  Apart from my own countrymen, there are no people so attractive as the Libyans. They are simple, intelligent, and affectionate; it is as though the beauty of the climate had entered into their souls.  Whenever I think about them, I always wonder at their inexhaustible kindness, their capacity for friendship, and their purity of spirit. They have lived far from the turbulence of great cities and they have not been corrupted.  In Libya, even the  most reactionary bourgeois behaves in a way which is somehow attractive. (pg. 101)

After the long struggle to help free his country and imprisonment in France even during the fight for independence, Ben Bella came to the US to speak at the UN after he became president. He also was very happy to meet President Kennedy.  

I liked Kennedy even before I had met him because I knew that, as long as 1957, he had made a speech calling for Algerian independence....He gave me the impression of a courageous and honest man, but he seemed to be subjected to endless pressure and to be, to an extraordinary degree, the prisoner of a system. (pg. 136)

When socializing with Americans on a diplomatic level, Ben Bella refused to drink alcohol while some of his fellow Algerians who were less devout and too willing to please and fit in with their hosts did so.  Throughout the book and with this example, Ahmed Ben Bella showed himself to be a man who knew who he was, determined to be faithful to his religion and culture, and not one who could be blown and tossed around by any wind.  His impression of America sounds very much like now even though the description was made over forty years ago.

In the United States, I missed the warmth of human relations more than anything else.  America is like a wall: right from the start, those vertical cities with their enormous buildings gave me this impression.  What is missing is communication from man to man.  Although those great American cities are like ant-heaps full of men, they are also like deserts.  I had never seen so many people as I saw in America, but I had never felt so much alone.  In those crowds of human beings, there was an inhuman emptiness; there was a complete absence of human emotions, which to us Algerians are an essential part of life, without which we are unable to breathe. (pg. 138)

What he said is magnified even more so to me than perhaps the average person in this country because I have lived in two societies where human interaction and relationships are important.  If I had only lived in the US I couldn't sense the way he did what a dead zone the society and culture is on many levels.  I would think like many here that this is as good as it gets, or I would be like some who aren't aware of their own loneliness and emptiness.

Like other leaders than and now the US government wanted Ben Bella on their side for their own interests in the end.  They didn't want him to make his own decisions or do what was best for the Algerian people in general.  When they learned he was to visit Cuba after he left DC, the media immediately began to demonize him.  But Ben Bella went on to visit Fidel Castro and Cuba anyway, and the Cubans were massively exuberant after the dead zone he'd recently flow away from. 

When Robert Merle's book was published in 1965 Ahmed Ben Bella had already been overthrown in a coup. His whereabouts were unknown, and Merle who was so impressed by him was very alarmed about the possibility that Ben Bella had been killed.  However, Ben Bella was still alive.  He would marry while in prison and would be there many years with his family.  His wife would become pregnant and lose their first and only biological child, but after coming back from the hospital she would bring another infant that had been abandoned to replace their own. Later they would adopt another child.  Eventually Ben Bella would be freed, live in exile in Switzerland, and then he would go back to Algeria. 

Ahmed Ben Bella is one of the giants from the glory days of Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism.  More young people running fast to be enslaved need to read about him and others who fought hard to grant people in their countries and beyond with genuine human dignity not the manufactured, mediocre, degraded,destructive nonsense they now called freedom that corrupts and cripples a person's soul and identity in the end. 

Interviews and more about Ahmed Ben Bella:

For Ahmed Ben Bella, The Liberation of the People of the South is Still Unachieved

Egyptian Newspaper Al-Ahram's interview with Ahmed Ben Bella

Ahmed Ben Bella Inspired Millions Around the World

And a video honoring him.