The World Is Still a Madhouse and I'm Back

I didn't intend for this post to be so long, but it ended up that way.  I had a lot to say.  I feel better telling it.

The last time I posted to my blog the world was the same as now.  I think it gets worse by the month.  I believe  even madness was slower paced once.  I have no way of proving it though. I think madness used to come in new forms by the century or half century or decade or yearly or biannually, but today different forms of human neurosis appear every month if not every week.  I believe many people are no longer able or willing to stop and take a look at themselves. Many aren't coping.  They won't allow themselves to ask 'Am I a little bit out of control; why I am doing what I'm doing; does it make any sense?' 

I stop sometimes, be quiet, and just think.  I have a thick conscience so maybe it is a little easier for me to ask myself are the things I'm doing in my life of any intrinsic value?  Have I been knowingly cruel to anyone?  Who is toxic in my life and should I start avoiding them?  Am I really learning anything of benefit from these people or am I just hanging out with them so as not to be lonely?  Are the people on Facebook really my friends or since I never talk to maybe two out of over 300 people am I deluding myself and wasting time?  Should I have kept up blogging and wrote for myself instead of posting something for an audience on social media?  Is it healthy to hold on to people that make me unhappy and for whom I have little trust or respect?  

I decided to come back to blogging because I enjoyed it far more when I wrote a post then posting on social media whether Facebook or Twitter.  It felt more creative, and it was fun to express my thoughts in a long way instead of in one sentence, abbreviations, or just chunks of words. I know blogging is out of style, but I'm writing for myself.  I will post what I blog on Twitter, and people can accept my offering or not.  

I deleted, not deactivated my Facebook page on Sunday night.  It will be all gone in fourteen days.  The chains are gone, and I have such a sense of relief.  The final act of a relative made it clear to me that I was making the right decision to jettison Facebook out of my life for good.  It was a cousin I only saw once when I was girl.  I barely remember when we met.  He had come down here from New York with one of my uncles.  I think he might have been an older teenager or in his early 20s and I was much younger, still a girl, perhaps a pre-teen.  In all those years since, we had not communicated.  In fact, I had forgotten about him.  I have many cousins on my father's side of the family that I have never met.  Many of my father's people left the South years ago like many black people did to escape Jim Crow laws seeking what they believed would be a better life in the North. Some succeeded, but most did not. 

Black people tend to be blind followers.  When a few gather the courage to do something different, many others will follow if they relate to the ones who decide to make a move.  We don't give much thought or do much research to really find out whether a situation or location is suited to us on an individual level.  We go by hearsay. We do everything collectively.  Our fear to really leave the plantation has lead us to a culture of failure because many of us are anti-intellectual and easily led astray by various con artists whether they are preachers, celebrities, sport figures, one particular political party or "my president." 

Almost a month ago one of my cousins who lives here in town told me on Facebook to introduce myself to one of our cousins after I saw an old photo of my dad on the cousin's page where he had been tagged. Most of dad's people killed themselves with alcohol.  Big city life corrupted them beyond any redemption, so they self destructed.  Also before they left the South my grandparent's home was one of those early dysfunctional residences that are the norm now.  The only difference was there were more kids in the house and a father; my grandmother had a total of eighteen pregnancies, fourteen children survived.  Her husband, my grandfather, threw away his money on alcohol, gambling, and women. This is the kind home my father grew up in.  

By contrast my mother grew up in a stable home far out in the country.  Her parents were religious and kind having both black and white friends.  Both family and friends could depend on them.  My maternal grandfather had drank when he was young, but unlike my paternal grandmother who found excuses to remain with an abusive husband, my mother's mom gave my grandfather an ultimatum.  She hated alcohol even though my grandfather was never abusive or violent.  He'd go out and drink, come home and collapse.  But grandma didn't want her kids seeing that, so she threaten to take my mother and her older brother who were both small kids and leave.  Grandma was never a doormat.  Granddad never touched alcohol again.  He was good at going cold turkey like that and never returning to the garbage dump.  I remember when he stopped smoking.  I was a teenager, and he had heard from some preacher that smoking was a sin because our bodies are temples and putting everything in our bodies is not good.  Granddaddy who rolled his own cigarettes with Prince Albert tobacco and loved to chew tobacco announced he was stopping them both, and he did.  He never smoked a rolled cigarette or chewed tobacco again.  He encouraged grandma to stop dipping stuff, but it took her awhile to kick her habit.  

My father's family was stubborn, rebellious, and self destructive like way too many black people.  They have made little important progress as human beings.  They were highly materialistic and liked the "good things in life" such as big cars and nice houses, but they lacked moral strength and self control.  They tended to sink into madness, disease and self destruction.

So I introduced myself to one of my cousins who lost her mom to cancer about two years ago. Immediately I could sense our personalities were not going to mix well.  I looked at her Facebook page and comments and she seemed bitter, arrogant, and angry.  She'd post these almost whiny complains on her page.  I learned that one of her sons had been murdered at age 25 and left five children behind. I felt sorry for her.  I want to help people, but I have learned only the person can help themselves, however, they must have the will-power to renew their minds.  Most don't.  Most will drive themselves down to hell.  I feel sorry for people obsessed with changing the world or some individual.  They will 99% of the time fail. 

Well, this cousin told me she would tell another cousin about me.  This other cousin who lost her father back in December had started a family reunion page on Facebook.  Suddenly I was getting several friends requests from relatives daily.  I was delighted and wanted to connect.  I was added to the group and I started to post old family photos of our uncles, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, some of their fathers and mothers.  Many  seemed to like them, but the first cousin I talked to who'd lost her son said off hand she'd seen most of them and a grandson of my uncle that the page was dedicated to give almost one of those "meh" comments. He said he'd seen them before.  I doubted all the other cousins had, but often people only think about themselves and what they've done or seen, not anyone else.  I would post photos and explain who the people were in detail along with little  stories about the photo based on what dad or mom had told me.  My uncle's grandson had been in prison and he seemed to glorify that like some African-American males do.  He appeared to get in a sort of race with me posting photos after saying he'd seen most of mine.  I had said I would only post a few at  a time because I didn't want it to seem I was spamming her page, but my cousin who started the page said to post as often as I liked.  I noticed that when I stopped posting photos he abruptly stopped.  I just felt he didn't like me.  

Black people do not want to admit this, but many black men do not like women who are highly educated.  Street smarts are fine but book smarts are not.   It is very common for some lower class or "ghetto" blacks to feel intimidated by educated or middle class blacks.  No matter how friendly we are they are suspicious and see us as more of an enemy in some cases than whites. It's OK for whites to have certain things or to have it all, but we're not supposed to.  

There is also a jealousy factor there as well.  Many black people do not want to see others succeed.  I don't have any money.  I just have an education, and I live comfortably with my parents.  I have lived alone several times, but I prefer the non-Western way of not living alone if I can help it.  I think family is very important.  The world is a hostile place for women, and if you can get along with and live with family, it makes more sense than living alone and being a prey for all kinds of predators.  This ex-con cousin might even have more money than me.  But it was something about his attitude and the first cousin that as time went on I felt uneasy on that page.  Also I don't like arrogant people.  I see arrogance as a tool of someone who is really insecure but is putting on a show for everyone else.  These two cousins were arrogant, bragging on themselves.  I was amazed at seeing how some of the attitudes that have made it difficult for the older generation in my father's family to get along showing up in the younger generation.  My father has this similar swagger and posturing also, but at 74 he has mellowed a lot.  He is very insecure still like my cousins, but unlike them he has been heavily influenced by white culture, so he does not have the "hood" mentality I see in them.  Still the arrogance and need for affirmation by other people are in most of the people that I see on his side of the family.  When people are raised in homes where there is so much chaos or neglect they become this way.  The black class clown in school is often at heart insecure and feels uncared for at home, so he or she seeks attention at school, even if it's negative attention.  

I had become fed up with Facebook in the last year.  More and more I questioned why was I on there.  I tried to justify it by saying I had people on my list with a little influence such as "friends" who were professional and independent journalists. A few worked for PressTV and others appeared as political commentators on both PressTV and Russia Today.  I had a number of people on my friends list whom I'd attended school with.  I've known some of them since elementary school.  They are black and white, but I have almost nothing in common with them outside of the fact that we grew up in the same town.  All are older now of course, but those who were the poseurs and noise makers of middle and high school are still the same except for the usual adult accessories: a home, spouses, children, grandchildren, a job.  Most are still attached to football the way they were in high school.  Some can't let go of their favorite local bands and singers from college.  I didn't see a bit of emotional or intellectual growth.  Sure I have some favorite singers from my child- and young adulthood, but I have added many of other types of singers (most are international) and genres since then.  I see nothing except an urge to cling to the past in many of my former classmates.  I don't have all of the adult things because I was not willing to settle for less in most cases like many people do, but I have traveled, taught various age groups in three different countries, interacted with varied ethnicities and races of people, people which my classmates have probably never ever encountered; I have grown in insight and intellect, and I want to continue to grow in all that as well as morally, spiritually, and philosophically.  Many of them seem to be at a standstill.  My pastor paid me a wonderful compliment the other week when she said I was a philosopher.  I never expected that.  I have a lot more work to do on myself, everyone does, but I have changed plenty even in the last decade.  Even Muhammed Ali said sometime maybe in his rambunctious days, "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

So it was doomed with my cousins really from the beginning.  Sadly, we had little or nothing in common, and two of them just did not accept me.  I believe they wanted to, but we are from different worlds that will never mingle.  They probably see me as too "white" for their tastes.  They can't open themselves to my language.  I can't quite open myself to theirs.  I have tried to relate to all kinds of people in the past.  I understand now that it is not always possible.  Sometimes relating to your own can be the hardest task.  

It so turned out that I was so tired because of several bad experiences I'd had on Facebook in the last year that I decided to close my account for good.  It had been on my mind weeks before all of these cousins had sent invitations to be friends.  No matter where your privacy settings are you are still listed somewhere on there as "maybe you know so and so," and I've seen a drop down list of people I "might know" under the friend invite icon.  I had to deal with three monsters last year that were on my friends' list.  I had long stopped commenting on pages especially if the topic was controversial, but I did make a statement the other week about a cartoon concerning Africa and whether Christianity and homosexuality are indigenous to the continent.  I am not for the persecution of gays, but I am against this Western obsession with gay and exporting it.  It has nothing to do with human rights  and freedom just like humanitarian intervention did not.  At the heart of it is population control.  I didn't touch on the part about gays, but I argued that Christianity has roots in Africa.  Christ lived there as a child in Egypt.  European monasticism was an offshoot of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt.  Ethiopia was one of the first nations to make Christianity its' official religion.  I also mentioned St. Augustine who lived in what's now Algeria and the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas in what's now Tunisia.  But then some black guy who looked at least middle aged started arguing that Christianity is a European religion brought to Africa by slave masters.  Even though he was putting out some Afrocentric arguments that were quite strange, his hatred of Christianity  and whites was blinding him to over 1000 years of Christian history that was long before the first Europeans came to Africa to trade and kidnap human cargo.  Really he was advocating without even knowing it the white Western view that history began five centuries ago and nothing previous was of any value since we weren't involved.  He trolled away with me and some Africans who agreed with me.  I was put off by him and didn't want to waste my time.  I invited him to Google all that I had written, but he only wanted to make ridiculous statements that even I had never seen written anywhere else.  I was even more disgusted when one of the Ethiopians who was a young woman born America and who had agreed with me sent a friend invitation.  I accepted it.  She stayed on my page for most of the day, but then unfriended me and changed her page so only people could message her.  I had a number of African Facebook friends in Africa, and no one had ever done anything this stupid and psychotic before. 

Facebook has become about 70% insanity and 30% sanity along with the government spying on people.  I really came to see it as a highly unappealing outlet.  I liked a lot of good pages on there pertaining to my interests in current events, art, history, literature, poetry, architecture, and cultures.  I will miss those pages, but I will not miss the banality of Turks constantly taking photos of themselves sitting at a table with food before them, people lying about someone's baby they don't really think is adorable, people seeking attention with their doomed relationships, women bragging they have the most wonderful husband in the world or the greatest kids; do they ever tell them that or is it all for grandstanding on Facebook?  I had a complete lunatic and nuisance on there who expected me to chat with him everyday for hours.  I blocked him.  I don't like life in the virtual, and he needed to get a life.  I was sick of it all, and my cousins weren't putting anything out there to make me eager to keep my account open.  I can  see black women with blonde wigs  and tattoos any time especially if I turn on the television.  My cousins have not broken the cycle of ignorance and self destruction that started as far back as my grandfather who drank and my grandmother who put up with his abuse until it killed her at a young age.  

So when I announced I was going to close my Facebook page the cousin I mentioned at the first who had only seen me once years ago and knew nothing of my life or who I really am, unfriended me.  I messaged him and politely asked why, but then I told him it didn't matter since I was ridding myself of my account anyway.  I told him to take care and God bless.  I know he got the message because when anyone sees your message on Facebook, a little check mark appears below the message.  I suppose he was too cowardly to say anything.  I have asked black guys why in the past on Facebook when they displayed certain bad and off the wall behavior and most say nothing.  For all the bluster of some of them, they are the worst cowards.      

I deleted my Facebook page late last night.  I had fallen asleep early, and after I woke up I wanted to wipe away the nagging little demon that lurked in the back of my mind.  Deactivating Facebook was not enough.  I learned how to delete it, and I did. 

You have to get all of those devils out of your life to have peace.  Some times that devil is a person or a group of people.  Sometimes it's a website like Facebook that is just a vampire and time waster anyway particularly for a person like me. 

The last time I looked the world is still a madhouse.  I'm back blogging again. 

A Meditation: Using A Dead Man to Get Attention?

This is not a criticism of everyone, but a mediation on a few. Perhaps I'm no better than they are of whom I am writing about.  I did after all post a photo of Hugo Chavez and Muammar al-Gaddafi as my cover art on Facebook and as my header on Twitter. I posted two comments about them on Facebook, and did a few Tweets and Re-Tweets on Twitter.

Hugo Chavez lost his two year battle with cancer yesterday evening, and it wasn't a surprise to me. In 2005 I got experience with cancer when both my grandmother and her son, my uncle were diagnosed.  Grandma's was surgically removed, but my uncle's could not be because of the position of it and its' nature. (Another uncle currently has lung cancer.)  My uncle was given chemotherapy. Grandma lived several months after the surgery, but she was 93 and did like many elderly people will react after surgery. She forgot how to eat .  A feeding tube had to be inserted in her stomach.  Then she developed pneumonia and died.  The cancer killed my uncle the day after Christmas Day, and my grandmother followed him the next. She was never told her son had died because no one wanted to upset her.  My family watched them  slowly die over the year 2005.  I am experienced with cancer, and I sensed that Hugo Chavez would not survive. 

I am not a worshiper of any human being.  There are people I admire or like very much.  Most are dead though.  I see only a few living people with admirable qualities these days. They may appear to at first, but most make a slip on down the line.  It doesn't seem this era will permit people of true integrity and unselfishness to be.  Some feel that you can't be a Christian or a devout person and have compassion for others.  If you are religious you must be in the tradition of the American neo-conservative or the Muslim fundamentalist in the arena of politics. The political and social justice people of today feel that one must be an atheist or an agnostic to really have any genuine, compassionate social or political ideology.  Religious belief will  just get in the way in the real world.  They are very wrong.  But just like the old and my group built up a lot of prisons of the mind and heart the young in their twenties and thirties are doing the same thing.  Plus the young have the added disease of constantly seeking attention and notoriety.  Are they truly concerned about people and issues ,or are they using other people and the issues to self promote themselves? 

I was telling mom tonight about how some were reacting on social media about the death of Hugo Chavez.  My mother is 74. Getting a lot of attention never mattered to her.  There was no movie theater where they lived when she was growing up.  She was almost twenty when they got a television in about 1957 or1958.  My mother was pretty and still is at 74.  She never thought much about her looks.  Her group didn't seek every instance and nugget and grain in life to self promote.  Many people were private types back then and wanted to keep it that way.  There certainly wasn't the internet where anyone can easily do self promotion and appear to be important.   There was no celebrity culture like it is today. The celebrities had their place, and everyone else had theirs'.  But people back then didn't live in such a time as now with its' alienation and emptiness which we as humans continue to power and drive to a place we don't need to go.  But we are already in that place, this special prison we somehow walked into.

I look at the little kids on up to those through their 30s and a few beyond.  Due to the nature of these times there are a few even in mom's group who are powered by this need to be great and important. Usually they are the ones who can't cope with being old and probably always were the kind who were self important. 

Tonight when I told mom about the people who did blog posts in a split second, about the battle for the best cover art on Facebook and beyond containing Hugo Chavez, the repeated opinions of some and one after another going on for hours about his death, mom said about the blog posts especially, "They are like SEE how smart I am."  She laughed.  "You mean to tell me they're trying capitalize off a dead man?"  I told mom about those who behaved with class, posted a little and didn't get into a wild competition with Hugo Chavez photos, and we both felt they were being sincere and were not involved in self aggrandizement in a dead man's name. 

I am a fan of Hugo Chavez but not a fanatic.  I don't have all this gushing adulation. He was imperfect like all humans,  but I like him because he was fearless in the face of the US government's bullying and threats.  His mission was the elevation of the poor and oppressed.  He was also one of the very rare leaders who was not obviously physically black and who courageous enough to admit to having African ancestry.  That takes a lot of bravery because plenty don't want to be perceived as black or African even if the DNA is hidden somewhere.  Both Hugo Chavez and Muammar al-Gaddafi shown with goodness in several areas, and they had their flaws like any human being.  I only worship God, not men or women. The latter will betray you, ignore you, or even if they are there and loyal, one day they will ultimately pass away. 

It is not always about what we do, but how we do it and the impression we leave.  Many people crave the spotlight. Some seek attention at any and all costs. They use people, even the dead ones. There are the pseudo-analysts and experts. There are the princes and princesses of mainstream, alternative, and social media.  Do they have any human feelings for anyone outside of themselves I wonder sometimes?  

I never like it when someone is quick to call me an expert.  I don't like words like activist either because so much has been polluted by certain camps of people who go by that title.  I also don't live in a place where I can really be affective in getting across any unorthodox information to wake people up.  There's a certain mindset where I reside, and I can't get any support.   But I have honest compassion for people, and that is better, I feel than a lot of grandstanding. I write and do the best I can when I feel well.   If I can make a child happy like the one I worked with yesterday, and I was told he was a problem student, but he took to me and obeyed me as I helped him to learn leaving the class with a smiling face, I feel good.  It isn't all about me.  I praised that child, helped him, and to see his smile and hear his good-bye was enough for me.

Many of us lack humbleness.  Being humble is not weakness or being a pushover.  However, we are told that in order to succeed we must be competitive and always ready with an answer.  Never admit that you don't know or are in error.  We are told that if we have good looks and brains to use one or both to get ahead so we can be the king and queen of the hill. We are told all these things directly or indirectly in this worldwide culture, and along the way we have become selfish, obnoxious, plastic, bombastic, and ultimately less likeable because of our pride.  This is the world we live in.  To survive it I laugh about it with my mom sometimes, but deep inside I cry. 

Rest in Peace Hugo Chavez.  I am not sure what ideology I have.  It's not one thing though.   I'm also learning and observing. I used to be a Democrat. Now I'm a Pan-Africanist. Politically I lean more towards socialism somewhat and towards Orthodox Christianity faith wise.  Since your eyes were on the poor and despite the imperfections, your concern for the impoverished and oppressed showed your heart was in a good spot.  Jesus hung out mainly with the poor, though some want to say he drove a Cadillac and was living like a billionaire, but some of us don't buy that.  Some want to cut Him completely out of the picture, but  He was a threat to the establishment of his day as well, nonetheless He was perfection. 

Thanks to those in social media who handled things with class tonight and then went on about your business.  I really hope this post didn't come off as me trying to use a dead man to draw attention to myself. This is meant as merely a meditation and an observation. 

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.

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.