Eagerly Climbing Mountains to Get to School

We take so much for granted in America.  We don't have everything we need such as a healthy and affordable food supply for everyone and some other things, but we do have a degree of freedom unlike these Palestinian children in the video.  They literally have to climb mountains and walk through the wilderness to get to school.  Their parents understand the importance of education and that their enemy can take everything else from them except their education.  This video needs to be shown in many places across America. 

The Palestinians are prisoners in their own land.  They've been boxed in, banished, walled in, chased off, bombarded, humiliated, and still they encourage their kids to go to school to learn and not to play, socialize bully, and date. 

African-Americans parents really need to see this.  Yes, we don't live in a post-racial society, but imagine if your children had to get up at 4AM and ride a donkey to a school that is two hours away. 

Schools have been renovated and rebuilt in my town almost each year for the last several years.  They have added extra centers of learning for high school students, but here the graduation rate is still only 70.1%.  For the state where I reside it is only 69%.  The school district thinks it's an achievement to be a point higher this year than the state. This is not an achievement.  Still 30% of the students are falling through the cracks, and it can't be blamed on all the teachers either. In some areas of the country which are predominately African-American the rate is only 50%. 

In some ways we have it worse than the Palestinians.  For one I seriously doubt if these children come from homes where the women are single.  Illegitimacy is rare in the Muslim world.  Depending on the country, you could pay with your life if you had a child out of wedlock.  Marriage, family, community, and if existent tribe and clan are still important. The idea of the "strong" individual alone and without support is alien to the mindset of most people in the Middle East, Africa, and many Asian cultures.

So how do we blacks in America rebuild ourselves?  It takes a home at a time working on itself and the children.  We African-Americans need to start marrying again and teaching the children that education is a foundation and ticket out of ignorance and self-destruction.  Being a rapper, singer, actor, preacher, or a ballplayer are not the only options for us.  There are so many different careers, and you don't have to be rich and in the spotlight to be happy and fulfilled. 

The Palestinians are isolated with no one to look out for them.  The Israelis sometimes come in and bulldoze schools making it very difficult for Palestinian children to go to school. 
These Palestinians in the video are prisoners in their own land, but still they are attempting to build a future for their kids by encouraging them to get an education no matter what. 
They make no excuses. 

No one can save African-Americans now.  There's few that even care. Obama doesn't care.  The "messiahs" and "Moses" of the past failed to get most of us out of bondage because the biggest bondage of all that most of us have is in our own minds.  We have to free ourselves one individual at a time.

If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more. ~ Harriet Tubman

A Rap: Black Hatred

This video showed up either on my Facebook or Twitter timeline.  I've forgotten which site that fast.   I ponder the issue of black hatred or self hatred often because in the media and out in real life I see so much evidence that many black people aren't comfortable with their own being. I see it in both black males and females.  I see self hatred as a kind of blasphemy.  To hate the features God intended a person to have is not only abnormal but an insult to God.  

Some black self hatred in America comes as a result of being severed from our homeland and true identity.  There are not many good blueprints for black people in America to go by so more and more we have been cast away into dysfunction.  As a people we have been existing in dysfunction for a very long time, but only now it is widespread. 

In this case I'm excusing this rapper's language.  He uses less profanity than most rappers including my old favorite Tupac. 

I'm also posting the piece below in italics.  I can't remember where I got it online exactly.  I saved it to my documents months ago.  There is much truth in the piece, but I disagree somewhat that Africans are in as bad a shape as we in the Diaspora here in the US especially.  Here's why. I haven't been to any countries where large populations of black people of African descent live such as Brazil and some other parts of Latin America or the Caribbean, so I can't critique, but I know African Americans very well, all of our pathologies.  I feel that many continental Africans lack self-confidence in standing up to various forms of oppression and exploitation, but one strength many have is that they still respect marriage and have a desire to be wedded and to have an intact family and community structure. Africa is not the West where the individual rules.  The clan and the tribe hasn't been erased there.  I don't believe that illegitimacy and divorce is as rampant in Africa as here.  Also many Africans value education. They don't see learning as being "white"  as some African Americans have described getting an education. Overall American culture is anti-intellectual. But too often all the shortcomings, ills, and recklessness of the society blacks in America take on with a hardy vengeance.  This all goes back to self-hatred and lack of  a true and meaningful identity.  Our history didn't begin with the nightmare and oppression of slavery in the Americas, and we haven't reached the pinnacle as a group because of President Obama.  Very very far from it.  

Therefore, I will end in a bit and allow you to ponder like I often do. 

One way we can conquer our self hatred as a people is to connect with Africans online since most of us will never get to Africa.  I've been to two African countries and have meet many Africans from various countries over the years.  My view of self began to slowly change when I set foot on the continent.  It took many many years, but I changed into more of a complete person.  Today I see myself as an African of the Diaspora.  There is no nationality, country, or continent named "black."  Black is a misnomer and too limited in scope for me.  I alienates me from my origins.  Like "American" it just isn't detailed enough for my tastes, describing the essence of who I am.  It's too new, inaccurate, and limiting.  Shame over my skin color or hair texture has nothing to do with me refusing to go solely by the description of black.  I don't have any shame over my features. But I want more. I want to identify myself with my ancestry and a particular geographic region which I relate to the most.  There is nothing wrong with that. I have a longing for this, and I will not deny my longing.  It is my right. However, "African" doesn't quite go deep enough as well for somewhere on that vast continent in a little spot among some tribe or clan is my true home.  I am a part of Africa whether north, south, east, west.  We are one, and I am proud to be who I am.  Everyone should be. 

I have come to the conclusion that the majority of Afrikan men and women in the UK -- and most certainly in places like the USA and Caribbean, and most probably in Afrika -- are 'functionally mentally ill'. By this I mean that whilst most people in this category can function effectively at a certain level, i.e. hold down a job, obey the rules and laws of society, maintain social relationships over a prolonged period time, use their cognitive skills to solve various problems, there is something fundamentally wrong or missing at the heart of their psyche. This affective gap manifests itself in a deep-seated but unrecognised sense of racial inferiority, an inability to admire the Afrikan physiological and cultural aesthetic, a lack of racial self-esteem and confidence and a profound difficulty in working effectively with other Afrikans, often induced by the inability to trust one another. This functional mental illness is one of the main reasons that most Afrikan controlled countries are economic and social basket cases. It explains the widespread use of skin bleaching agents by Afrikan women and why Afrikan women who 'go natural' with their hair often provoke such enormous and negative emotional reactions from other women who use chemicals to straighten their hair, or who wear wigs, weaves, extensions etc. It explains why Afrikans find it so hard to forgive each other and yet can forgive Caucasians in South Afrika (and other places) for their atrocities without any strong demand for justice or reparations. It explains why we are in such a mess and yet so many of us think we are 'doing well' as individuals. It explains why so many Brothers think that 'things' will help them to feel whole and never learn the lessons when they don't. It is time for a rethink. Time to get down beneath the rhetoric and the kente cloth (or Versace) and deal with the pain. Deal with the pain of being rejected by your absent father, the pain of never being hugged by your physically present but emotionally absent father, the pain of belonging to a defeated and oppressed race, the pain of having to go to your oppressor for the means to live, the pain of a lifetime of insults and accusing looks, the pain of being rejected by your women, the pain of somehow feeling less than a man. We are a group of men who have been conquered and we have failed in our single most important task, namely the protection and defence of our community. However, no matter that many battles have been lost, the war continues apace. Can we face ourselves in the mirror of our ancestors and those yet to be born and summon the will and self-belief to win? For win we must. You cannot have an honourable defeat at the hands of white supremacy. Let's do some healing and some cleansing and build a nation of men our women and children can be proud of."

Paul Ifayomi Grant
Niggers, Negroes, Black People & Afrikans

Rather a Brief Manifesto

It has been awhile, but I am here once again. 

I am better and more relaxed with taking standardized tests than when I was younger.  Saturday morning I took the certification exam for my state in early childhood, and if I passed it will be added to my middle grades and high school English certification. 

I am planning to re-enter the teaching job market here in the USA full-time.  I feel I am needed, so here I am.  I will not return idealistic like I was as a youth.  I return a realist and pragmatist, so therefore I might be able to survive this time.  I will be up against a lot, so God give me strength.  The familial decay, especially in the African American community, and the overall social degeneration that was evident when I was a young teacher, is three or four times worse now than it was when I hired for my first job as an educator.   

I am not sure if I passed the exam yesterday, but I don't think I failed either.  At my old high school, I finished all 120 multiple choice questions and four short essays in less than the allotted four hours.  Many many people were there taking exams.  I was relaxed and used the tactics for doing a standardized test I actually learned from teaching my students strategies for the TOEFL exam in Turkey five years ago. 

The first time I took a teaching certification exam near the end of my graduate studies, I passed it, but I knew few less back than about test taking I did this time.  In the past, I was a very nervous test taker.  I don't think I even studied for my first teacher's certification exam, yet I passed. 

In the last 12 months I really started to ponder how can I be of use to my people here.  I go to Walmart (don't particularly like it, but I go)  and see some of the elementary school kids I work with through substitute teaching, and some of them come up to me with hugs.  I get hugs from black, white, and Mexican kids, and I'm not even their regular teacher.   There is one little wide-eyed Mexican girl that even if she is with her mother or father at Walmart she leaves them and comes up to me with a hug.

Nowadays so many children are falling through the cracks.  It almost seems to me that a lot of people are in denial of this.  There is so much apathy and denial.  Kids aren't little birds or other baby animals who by instinct can strike out on their own early.  They need good parents and good teachers who guide them. I don't think a lot of kids get any love from their parents. The parents themselves don't really know what love is.  I don't agree that teachers should be surrogate parents, but the society we live in is forcing teachers to change diapers in early Headstart classrooms and teaching morals in first grades.  I see it in my town, and I wonder what the devil happened, but I don't have to really wonder.  I know.  

I see the society collapsing, and I know the problems are too big for me, but what is the little bit I can do right here in the place of my birth?  So I hope to come back and be a servant (teacher). 

I was also talking with my mother yesterday saying I am thinking of doing the research on how to run for mayor of my town. LOL Yeah, I'm really thinking about it.  Getting involved in politics is not my cup of tea, but what else can I do around here to help?  I am not bragging, but I'm not your typical black woman or woman in general. The people who know me are aware this is the case.  I was always different.  I will die a person who isn't afraid to be my true self. I've had a lot of experience with people of many races and various cultures.  I am a cultural hybrid, West and East, but I am more a person who leans towards the outlook of my African side and see things like an Eastern person.  What can I bring to the table here in this place? 

I'm something of a news and political junky but the stress?  The corruption?  Me mayor of this small city with a huge university and a rather exceptional public library?  But who knows?  At least I can do the research and then decide if I might take on such a challenge. 

Most of the population my small Southern city is black.  Outside in the suburbs where I live the population is more mixed.  However, the city  limits has seen some gentrification in the last few years for the renovation and building of housing and flats geared towards university students who don't want to live on campus or can't find space there.  My town has never had a black mayor to this date.  In recent years, all the mayors have been white women.

I keep asking myself what can I do, and with my sometimes not so great health, am I tough enough?  Mom in all her wisdom even said that running for mayor is very stressful.  She doesn't know what the first steps to take are, but she is right that it is a stressful proposition. 

For sure I want to bring back the idea of the public servant. The day of the leech, parasite, and mafia needs to come to an end.  But then again sometimes I just want to drown or bury myself in poetry because I really don't like the lime/lame light at all when it comes down to it.  hehehe  The lame light has led some folks to an early death...  #randoms