What's In a Picture? Was Martin Luther King, Jr. Beginning to Lean Towards Africa?

Some young and more conscious African-Americans care little for Dr. King.  They appear to see him as being desperate and begging to be a member of a system that would never fully accept black people in this country.  They lean more towards Malcolm X whom I also have some respect for, but because I am anti-war and violence unless it is a very absolute last resort, I am less of a fan of him and respect Dr. King more because of his peaceful principles. It is always easier to take the more violent path.  Look at the world at the moment... 

There is a theory that the US government assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. because he started to criticize the Vietnam War and American imperialism.  I think the theory is possible.  I also believe that any leader of an oppressed group anywhere in the world who does not agree with US policies is seen as a threat and will ultimately by liquidated.  Even if Dr. King only devoted his time to the issues of integration, he probably would have been framed and imprisoned or killed by elements within the government.  The same patterns are used over and over. They aren't very difficult to decode if people are willing to face reality and not be blindsided by propaganda, a task which is very hard for most Americans to do.  We are covered in this country by propaganda and illusions from the cradle to the grave.  Propaganda serves the purpose of welding together this very fragile and divided society which is heavily fractured along racial, class, and religious lines.  I keep seeing written online and spoken by whites the fairytale that America is more divided than ever.  This lament began with Bush and it has continued with Obama. It can't be said that everybody in America was united during slavery and Jim Crow or the Indian Wars unless the ones you're talking about were white people, and even they were not unified because of division by class and Christian sect.

But what was Dr. King doing in the following photos I have found below?  No one talks or writes much about this period when he met the leaders of newly independent African states.  Really I haven't read anything about it except what Dr. King wrote of his meeting with the first president of Algeria. I really want to research what was going on in-depth.  In the first photo I found he is with the first president of Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella, who was a hero in the fight to free his country from over a century of French rule.  Ahmed Ben Bella was both a Pan-Arab and Pan-Africanist.  (see my blog post about Ahmed Ben Bella)

The second photo is Dr. King with Kwame Nkrumah who was the first president of Ghana, a great intellectual, and Pan-Africanist.  Dr. Nkrumah was a hero of African independence, and many of his ideas of a united Africa were espoused by Muammar al-Gaddafi in his later years. 

The final photo is of Dr. King with the first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda. Kaunda fought for the independence of his country, was an author and also a supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement. 

Seeing these three photos I have to ask did Dr. King have an inkling that integration might not work? He did say that he feared he was integrating his people into a burning house.  There are a lot of people I know who never really evolve in their lifetimes.  They stop at about age 15 or 20 in their worldview.  They halt their own growth because growing involves a lot of pain, and they are afraid.  I have gone through intense growing pains in my life, and as long as I lashed out against them I was broken. Once I permitted myself to evolve and spread my wings, I became a more contented person.  I am often not pleased about so much in life, but I understand that often what troubles us are other people, and that we spend so much time worrying about their nonsense that we can't become the humans we were meant to be.  

I believe Dr. King was spreading his wings toward our ancestral homeland because he knew that America was going to be a hard if not impossible nut to crack.  He studied history and understood what it shows us about human nature and how difficult it is for people to change their hearts.  Was he becoming a Garveyite or Pan-Africanist? Who knows.  He was killed at a young age, and there were so many possibilities.  I think he was feeling his way around and was moving beyond all the lies and fears about Africans that we are taught in America.  Perhaps he saw that with all Africans whether dark, light, and all the shades in between we are one family and truly need each other. Perhaps he saw that the only way to become a whole people again was to reclaim our African identity, something which I strongly believe. Perhaps if the American government had a hand in murdering him, they also murdered him for this as well.  There are certain groups in this society and in the government who never want us to become whole and with a sense of dignity. 

Gangnam Style in the Classroom: Randoms

This is going to be rambling, but here I go.  This was post was stimulated by what I saw in a classroom yesterday, but I will get to that later. 

Years ago after frustration and feeling the heartbreak that I was not appreciated as a teacher and had gotten the worse of it because of my race, I said I would never teach in America again.  I turned my back on my profession, my people, and the society.  I felt that my principal, many of my black students, and some of the white parents had taken my good intentions, enthusiasm, dedication, and concern slapped me in the face with them, threw them on the ground, and trampled them all underfoot. 

I had gone into my profession idealistic and ready to go, eager to make a deep and positive impact on young lives, but instead I had been faced with bad grades, indifference, breaking up fights in the classroom or having to run to one of my male colleagues to break up the fights, being cursed at once by a student, a parent who made it painfully clear she didn't want me to teach her little blonde daughter solely because I was black, another who subtly complained because she didn't like the fact that I taught her blonde son three different subjects. You see a black person even with a masters degree couldn't possibly be capable of giving her son a quality education because the few of us who got that far were just benefactors of the handout called affirmative action and were naturally less qualified than whites.  I faced a parent who complained I was giving too much homework, extracurricular activities were more important for her daughter than doing work at home to reinforce what she had been taught in the class. 

There was so much I faced as a young teacher so that after two years I said never again.  My soul had been slashed by knives.  My spirit deflated.  I rejected another contract for third year at that school, applied and was accepted into Peace Corps, went to the African nation of Botswana, enjoyed myself there,  felt more at home in Africa than I ever had in America, loved my students and my international set of  colleagues from various African, European, and Asian nations, loved one man in particular, it was a great romance, but it was not meant to be, came back home and went through a very dark period in my soul, recovered from the depression, and in the last few years taught English occasionally in Turkey. 

It is not easy being an educated black woman in America.  I have an Eastern bent to my mentality than most of the people I live among.  I am a hybrid of sorts, American in name but more Eastern than American.  African Americans used to be closer to our African counterparts on the continent and other Eastern people back in my grandparent's era.  My mother's parents were very much like some African and Middle Eastern people.  They were deeply religious and unselfish.  Even though they were poor they helped those they knew who were poorer and more desperate. They were devoted to the well-being of their families, hated divorced, were well liked by their communities and even by many of the whites they knew.  These were the heroes I looked at and were influenced by including my mother who is just like her beloved mother and father. They live on in her and in two of their other surviving children.  I didn't have to look to the TV and have some celebrity or sports figure as my role model.  I lived with and visited my role models. 

It is not easy to live in America.  It's even more difficult and lonely if you refuse to model yourself after everyone else.  The is a recipe to being an American, and most people follow that recipe.   Blacks expect you to be just like them, and whites expect you to be a version of their envisioned stereotype.   All my life I have longed to be free to be me, not have some vision of who I am supposed to be imposed on me by my own people or white people. 

I would say that life has gone nothing like I had hoped partly because I was very different from most in my environment from almost the very beginning.  At various points in my life I have been an outcast.  Other times I was applauded, usually by foreigners and a few others.  I've had few real friends. Either I got bored and frustrated with them or they got bored with me.  I refused to settle for less, so I have been often alone with mainly my family except in the last few years.  For a long time I have felt more at home with non-Americans than I have Americans.  I am not an optimist like many Americans.  I am more of a fatalist and realist, but I am attracted to mysticism.  The world of the mind and of a higher plain outside of what we can see with the physical eye is more real to me sometimes than the absurdity of this world.  

I have come back and for better or worse I am going to try and help my people again.  I have been substitute teaching randomly in the last several years when I was not teaching English in Turkey.  When I was certified to teach in my state, I could teach anywhere from grades 4 to 12, but after elementary school I was confined to only the subjects of social studies and English which are my two favorite areas.  If the children in these groupings are not taught love of learning and respect for teachers and other adults by this age there is very little that can be done, I feel.  This may sound harsh and discouraging to some, but by second or third grade many kids in this country are infested with arrogance and dislike learning.  Many including people in the government blame the schools, but few are courageous enough to blame the parents, but maybe they don't because of their own guilt over their lax parenting.  Some say the schools are grooming kids for our prison industrial complex, and yes the way some schools are formulated, this is probably true, but a lot of parents are also aiding in their kids' downfall.  Then at the same time there is the threatening cloud of the state taking away people's kids if there is the accusation of abuse which can come even if a parent is not being abusive, but is only trying to discipline an unruly child.  The system we live under craves more prison inmates and just sits there like some big predatory fish with his mouth wide open for small fish to just swim right in.

Next week I begin an experiment to help my people. I will be teaching a course at a local community center on African historical figures from J.A. Rogers' first volume of World's Great Men of Color.   I have Facebook friends who live in other countries, a few who help and try to enlightened others.  They have been a big influence on me and an inspiration even though I haven't met any of them face to face.  They write prose and poetry, have gatherings to talk about geopolitics and write articles about wars and their consequences. Some are guests on international news networks that I watch online.  Some have gone on peace missions, and organize and go to demonstrations.  In other words they are trying to make a difference, a phrase commonly said in this country.   I am invited to some of their gatherings, but sadly I live too far.  Even though my residence is in a small city with a huge state university, this place is an intellectual and cultural wasteland.  I was a part of a writer's group for almost four years, but no deep and honest critiquing of anyone's work was done, When the leader of the group become so self obsessed, stop coming with anything to read and only wanted to talk about gifts she got from her grandson and men, I quit silently without saying another word to her or sending an e-mail.  I was also a part of what I call a pseudo-intellectual group run by some so-called friends who are Turkish.  They are mostly doctoral students, but they don't seem to have the dedication or level of knowledge to be Ph.D candidates. To me is it very strange to sit in a room with a group of people working on higher degrees who are too afraid to voice their own opinions.  I got tired of being one of four openly expressing my views in that group when all the rest were too afraid to open their mouths.

Recently I was invited to a gathering of black ladies, but after sitting through a presentation given by the head of the local Red Cross, a middle aged, dyed blonde, fat, white female who acted like she was still God's gift to men I said I would not go to a second meeting which I was invited to.  I've so tired of going to some prosaic gathering dressed up as something interesting and refreshing when it really isn't just to get out of the house.  I like my own company better than being bored to the edge of insanity.

As to Gangnam Style, it has replaced one of Justin Bieber's songs in some of the elementary schools here.  The pre-K and kindergarten set require more than Mary Had a Little Lamb and The Itsy Bitsy Spider nowadays.  Such nursery rhymes and childhood songs just don't cut it with kids raised on TV and Gameboys.  Learning must be backed up by entertainment or the kids go cold to it and stay jittery.  Yesterday I worked in a pre-K class and the parapro couldn't get the kids to pay much attention to swaying houses with lyrics about numbers and days of the week, but when she pulled up a version of  Psy's Gangnam Style on the smart board, the kids were all eyes.  They wouldn't dance before but when Psy and a woman dancing in hot pants, garters, and police cap got on the screen they did.  At four they are already being conditioned to become disciples of fads and commercialized entertainment like the rest of the population.  Today's media is extremely adroit in indoctrinating all ages.  It was sad to see that early they are learning to conform to what doesn't promote art and culture, the here today gone tomorrow opiates that the media pushes down their throats.  Learning for learning sake died some time ago in this country.  It is advocated in educational circles that education and entertainment must be wed in the American classroom.  American kids need an assortment of extras to get excited about learning.  Still so many of them fall short.

I liked the parapro at the school today.  Despite hating her choice of putting up a video of Gangnam Style, I guess she felt the only way she could grab the attention of a large class of 4 year olds, a number of which were highly jittery was to start up a popular pop song. She and I sat together at recess and talked, finding common ground since both of us plan to take the state teacher's certification exam this spring.  She even asked me about myself.  Often as a substitute teacher and being a black woman people just expect that you probably have only a high school diploma or less.  Most don't ask me about myself. Living abroad where people were often curious about me resulted in my being spoiled a little. I was more visible abroad and sometimes got weary of the attention.  At the schools here they probably couldn't imagine that I have taught both here and internationally and that I have a higher degree.  Sometimes as a substitute I feel invisible, but I make myself feel better about that invisibility by conducting myself professionally and dressing better than the majority of the teachers.  I still believe in professionalism in attire on the job.  In Botswana and Turkey the standards for dress at work were higher than here.  It's difficult for me to go to schools and see teachers dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and some even showing cleavage.  What happened to high standards and dress codes?   

I don't worry so much about the majority or white culture around me.  My concern is for my people.  I am not sure there is much hope for us locked into an alien identity that has scarred us.  I am not saying that all white people are bad, but there is so much that is wrong in the culture which destroys lasting human connections on so many levels.  I remained connected to my ancestral values mainly due to how I was taught by my mother and witnessed from her parents.  My father is very American in his outlook.  He admits that even as a child he dreamed of having what white people had.  His family was not close and very dysfunctional.  He and some other family members say they don't like having people coming around visiting all the time.  In all the years that he visited his in-laws he never allowed himself to open my grandparents' refrigerator once even though almost everyone they allowed into their home were treated with hospitality.  You're at home, my grandmother would say.  I wonder how my grandparents felt about my father never trying to really make himself at home for all those years.  Dad's mother grew up in an abusive and violent home and then married my grandfather who drank, was abusive and unfaithful.  He said she would tell him to never accept food at the home of his friends even if he was offered it.  I feel the suspicion, competitiveness, narcissism, and paranoia that some of the members of my father's family have, including himself, are some of the worse symptoms of white American culture.  However, despite the differences I've had with my father and continue to have I must say that one spot I praise him in is that he has successfully run a small business for many years and states that black people must become more independent, productive, and have their own businesses.

So this is my rambling post.  I guess I just wanted to get a few things off my mind even though this was inspired by seeing little kids dance to Gangnam Style in a classroom.  I wonder often where are we going as people.  It never gets better despite all of the so-called improvements, all the "grand" propaganda that is touted.  It will never get better until we examine ourselves and realize where we are heading.  

  

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.  

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.   

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.

Two Short Stories of Two Strong Men

I love stories.  Good stories have a lot of power if we open our minds and hearts to them.  People who think past the shallows love good stories with meaning and lessons that replicate real life.  In the last few days I have been exposed to two stories of two strong men.  One of the strong men I knew personally.  The other I did not.  One was a devout Christian.  The other was a devout Muslim and was briefly the leader of an African country when I was a very little girl.  These two strong men were my grandfather J.C. and the other was Ahmed Ben Bella.  My grandfather died in 1987, we believe at the age of 72.  He was never really sure of his birth date. My grandfather was a farmer and carpenter.  Ahmed Ben Bella died last week at age 93.  He helped in the liberation of his country, Algeria, from over a century of French colonial rule, and he was the first president of Algeria from 1963 to 1965 when he was overthrown.  He spent over 2 decades in prison, went into exile in Europe, and later came back to his homeland and functioned as an elder statesman.  He was respected not only in Arab but also in African countries as a freedom fighter and liberator.  

These two men both experienced discrimination.  My grandfather was biracial.  He was illiterate, but he knew how to survive.  Racial discrimination was a fully open and accepted way of life when he was growing up and into his adult years.  Ahmed Ben Bella saw discrimination at school from one of his teachers who was biased against the students because they were Muslim and Arab. One African I follow on Twitter said the other day that Ahmed Ben Bella had "more than nine lives."  He was the ultimate survivor.   

I've read some of the things that Ahmed Ben Bella said and like my granddad he was unafraid to speak the truth and stand up for what is right.  I remember my grandfather as a very quiet man who spoke slowly with a old fashioned black southern brogue.  He went to church regularly, and he and my grandmother both believed in helping others and providing hospitality to both blacks and whites.  Before I was born and my mother was a girl, my grandfather had a rebellious streak.  He did not tolerate being taken advantage of from his white employers.  Perhaps he got away with what he did because he looked more or less white.  My mother told me a story this weekend about an incident.  He had done work for some white people.  When it was time to eat, he was told they would give him a meal, but he would have to eat it outside.  Granddaddy responded audaciously that he had a kitchen, chairs, a table, and a wife who could cook him some food; he got in his car and left.  

Mom said they often worried that my granddad would get into serious trouble one day for speaking his mind, but he never did. It was the American South under Jim Crow, and he could have been attacked or killed for being blunt to white people.  By the time I knew my granddad he had mellowed.  But I understand more and more now the source of my own outspokenness, but mine has arrived later in life. My outspokenness comes from not only dad and sometimes even mom, but also my grandfather.  We are as proud as some Eastern peoples from ancient cultures, and we don't take humiliation and disrespect lightly.

A few days after Ahmed Ben Bella's death, I found an interview he'd done about twelve years ago for an Egyptian newspaper.   I was fascinated by the story of how he met his wife.  He was single when he had briefly been president.  He didn't marry until he was middle aged and was in prison.  Ahmed Ben Bella's mother was very concerned that he was still single.  He said in the interview that he had resigned himself to remaining unmarried because his life was devoted to the liberation struggle.  Later he was married, I read in another newspaper, by proxy.  A young female journalist who had visited him in jail decided she would marry him. They wed after seeing each other only three times.  It must have been love at first sight.  Yes, I'm still a romantic a heart, but I reside in a tough world, and I'm also a black woman in America, and at my age I have no illusions left... 

I thought it was so heartwarming the devotion of Ahmed Ben Bella's wife, joining her husband in prison.  There are very few people in this culture now who will stick by each other through thick and thin.  The few who still get married have eliminated the old phrases out of the marriage vows, and not much is left now. 

I read in another online paper in an obituary that Ahmed Ben Bella's wife was taken from the prison to have a baby in a hospital, but she miscarried.  When she was brought back to join her husband she had a day old abandoned infant girl with her.  Later the couple adopted a handicapped child.  I was really affected by the compassion of these two people taking two kids whom no one else probably wanted.  Ahmed Ben Bella said his daughter spent her first seven years in prison with him and his wife.  His wife was permitted to leave the prison to visit her family from time to time, but she was devoted to sharing his hardship and isolation with him. 

These two stories that I learned about in the last week are wonderful in their own ways. I wanted to tell them because I hope that whomever reads this will think.  I try to help people to think.  A good writer doesn't put down every little detail. There should be gaps, mysteries which make one wonder.  I ask questions to jar people's hearts sometimes.  I know many hate to think, but thinking and more than just thinking on a base level is important.  Deep thinking is very important.  Deep thinking leads to not only knowledge but also character, and it is never too late to increase knowledge and develop a good character.  

Even though my grandfather looked white, he identified fully with other blacks no matter what their hue was.  He always considered himself a black man.  He identified with the oppressed.  

I love these words of Ahmed Ben Bella which really state where his identity lay,  "I am Muslim first, Arab second and then Algerian. I am also proud to be an African."  

I too will always identify with the those who are strong in overcoming the perilous portions of life and the oppressed no matter where they are.   Since things will never be fully just in the country where I live,  I identify myself as an African. Africa was the first region (Turkey was second) where I first felt full acceptance and welcome, and I will always feel a gratefulness to Africans and an extreme fondness.