Thoughts About A Birthday

For me, in the last few years birthdays bring about thoughts of my mortality.  However, I am not afraid of death.  I do not wish to be younger when I look at these times, this era of human civilization which is becoming more uncivilized by the month.  I do not relish going back to when I was young.  Being black, that was no picnic.  The black child faces a loss of innocence very soon in America because of an early awareness that you are black and second rate.  This is imposed on the consciousness quickly and quietly.  We become damaged goods very early. 

Now humanity is warring with itself it appears almost everywhere, and being under an American system, a system and way of thinking that is not balanced and is hostile to the nature of what it means to be human, makes it even worse.  America should not ever be ruling this world. It is too vicious to the human spirit to be permitted to get its' influence everywhere.  It is too racist, degenerate, anti-intellectual, and hostile to be allowed to take over and get a grip on the souls of humanity.  Buying things to acquire a sense of self worth, being in debt all the time to get those things, bowing down to the dollar as god without having a real culture kills the spirit over time. 

I see killed spirits everyday on my job or when I go out shopping and see the disheveled masses.  My parents always taught me to be careful of my appearance even if I were just going out for something as ordinary as visiting a friend or going with them to the grocery store.  Their rules stuck with me. 

When I leave my home it is rare that I see a  person who cares how he or she looks.  People's spirits have been broken in this country.  Most aren't even aware of it.  Money, technology, and buying stuff we desire to have a sense of status does not make up for what a spiritual being needs.  We are not just material beings, but there is a more profound spiritual essence in us.  American life has deprogramed who we really are.  It is trying to do this with all humanity.  It is trying to root up the spiritual in humanity everywhere.   It started on black people 40 years ago, and all the world can now see what we have become.  

Now it is said that over 40% of Americans are on anti-depressants and the use covers almost all age groups including children from ages 0 to 3.   I worked in a pharmacy when I was  in graduate school back in the late 80s and even back then many people were coming in to have prescriptions filled for anti-depressants and anti-psychotics.  You have to be a strong one because American life can drive you crazy.

I turned 52 yesterday.  I feel my age and more sometimes.  I don't have the best health, but I don't think I have any life threatening illnesses.  I don't have any wrinkles.  My hands look like a young person's.  At heart I feel young and have retained a degree of innocence. 

I get e-mail updates when a young Iraqi woman named Sarah writes posts.  She mentioned that she mostly attracts people who are older than she is.  I'm the opposite.  I attract mainly those who are younger.  I try to squirm out of  being around them, but I often end up with people younger than myself and who are not Americans.  I can't seem to eradicate these people out of my life.  

At this point in my life I have heard enough and seen enough, so being around people does not bring me self validation.  I often like to be alone.  When I was younger I felt something was lacking in me because I was alone.  I got depressed about it.  I felt inadequate.  Now I have a great sense of my self-worth.  I feel that I am "royalty," so I do not hesitate if the behavior around me is bad to look down my nose at people or treat them as if they are invisible.  Even though I might be misjudged because of my skin color or gender, I do not judge anyone for these things.  I look at behavior and outlook.   I try to figure out any hidden agendas what might be a detriment to me or my people. No one can look down on me in the end, and for those who attempt to I let them know in my own subtle way that they have no right and that they have already failed.  

When I went into my fourth decade on this earth, I cried. Now I do not cry about getting older.  I don't blame myself anymore for the things American society stole from me.  I was robbed like most black women.  I was left with few options from my own group and certainly from white people.  I don't get all patriotic about America because I understand that this will never be fully my homeland.   I feel nothing when I think of America.  I am numb to it. It is about as important to me as a piece of unclean litter blown by the wind down the street.  The only affect it has is I hate what it does to people, what it transforms them into.  I will always be the child of those who were kidnapped and  whose identity erased.  I guess some will ask why do you feel this way? You aren't impoverished like a lot of black people.  You're middle class, comfortable.  It's true, but this is not a place I would have wanted to have raised children.  I would not want to see them damaged by their self-hating own group and the larger society.  Meeting the right kind of man was nearly impossible here.  Yes, I have had several marriage proposals, even a couple in the last year (not from Americans), but I turned them all down because I doubted their motives.  For other women if settling is fine, that is their problem.  It is not for me.  I have a right to the best or I'd rather be alone. 

I still hold on to what I was told one day in another country like a precious jewel.  It remains in my heart hidden.  I wear it still close to my heart like a pendant.  It may very well be true what some people told me in Botswana years ago.  I was told I look like some of the members of a tribe in Ghana who are royalty.  Some people can see more than the surface in others. They can connect beyond a certain point in time.   I can even do this sometimes. There are the seers who few, and then there are the rest who are blind or very myopic.  What those people of Botswana told me helped me to hold my head up high.  For a time after their words I was tortured by loneliness and tragedy, now I have came back to what I was meant to be. 

Yesterday I went out alone to celebrate my birthday.  I went to a Chinese buffet.  I am not afraid or ashamed to eat alone.  I walked into that restaurant with dignity, better dressed than all the Americans black and white and the Mexicans. Like most everywhere the people looked disheveled, run down.  The Chinese waitresses and one waiter were dressed better than some of the customers.  I got the waiter this time.  He was a tall Chinese man probably in his early thirties.  I'm 5'7 and a half and he was taller than me.  I think it might be the Japanese who are short.  I've only met one Japanese person.  Some of  the Chinese I've met are just as tall or taller than I am. 

Some girls' and women's self-worth all depends on whether or not they get male attention.  It does not for me.  It's a nice dessert, but I don't always need dessert.  You kind of learn to live with it in America. 

I don't try to make men into something more or less than they are.  I don't get into the debate about which gender is so bad or which is so good.  I've seen ugliness from them both, just like I've known some men and women with noble and pure spirits, who tried to be good in this world which drives people who are weak to evil.

My Chinese waiter was very kind, and I can see when a man is attracted.  He wasn't too bad looking either.  He looked like someone who should be a professor in a lecture hall instead of waiting tables in a restaurant.   In this world some of us become displaced.... 

I don't eat a whole lot when I eat.  I know my limits and refuse to stuff myself.  Yesterday was unusual.  I really love Chinese food.  I had a big appetite  for a change and ate two plates of fried rice, those wonderful green beans, spicy beef, chicken, fried potatoes with parley, a tomato, cucumber, parley and cilantro shrimp salad, two half cups of soup so spicy it made my nose run, topped off by a big spoonful of banana pudding, two pieces of cantaloupe, and a piece of honeydew melon. I took my fortune cookie and left.

When I got home I had only been there about 15 minutes when the phone rang.  I thought it might be my brother calling from his job, but instead when I looked at the caller ID I saw it was one of my Turkish ex-friends or friends.  They still consider me their friend even though I told them to get lost in November.  I'd said I had nothing in common with "you people."  2013 was not been a banner year for me.  I felt I needed a break from all except a minimal amount of people.  I was mentally and spiritually exhausted.  I needed renewal. 

I had already got an e-mail the other week from the Turkish Student Association inviting me to an afternoon lecture at the university. It was on one of those goody goody topics about world peace and people coming together. We get these all the time, but the world becomes more violent and unstable.  The professor leading the lecture shouldn't be in my town but up in DC preaching to the warmongers and bloodsuckers the need for peace and cooperation.   I unsubscribed to the e-mail once again and gave my harsh but truthful reason why.  I used to say all the time that Turks will not take no for answer, and from my experience of being around many of them for the last 10 years many don't. 

So  the call was from the Turkish friend I had told I wasn't having nothing else to do with any of them.  I was sure she would get the word out to the rest.  After not seeing any of them or saying anything for four months, I was being invited for a little get together for my birthday.  I had been praying for the last weeks that I wouldn't run into any of these people while I was out shopping.  I got nervous last week when I was out shopping for groceries. I thought I saw one of the Turkish men I know.  But it turned out to be just a regular white guy. 

When I talked to Ebru I gave no indication that I had once been angry.  I was surprised by the call.  I was also surprised how quickly I acquiesced to her invitation to come over for some Turkish tea and snacks.  She even said she would cook dinner if I liked, but I said I had already stuffed myself at China Star, so my stomach was not going to hold much else for the remainder of the day. 

For my 50th birthday the Turks gave me a surprise birthday party.  I was given everything they felt I liked including a Turkish tea pot.  I even was given a book of poetry and artwork by the poet Rumi who they refer to as Mevlana.  I know how to make Turkish tea not the coffee.  I really love the latter. 

I've long wondered why this people want me around and cling to me. They claim that they all love me.  Is love still possible in this world, I sometimes wonder?  I used to really believe in it.  How sad that I have become a skeptic. 

Yesterday on my 52nd birthday I only met with two Turkish female friends. Sezin was ill with a stomach bug, but she tried to spend some time with us.  Sometimes she'd go back to her room and sick.  Being with them brought back memories of Selcuk and Nur who lived in the same apartment complex before they moved to Buffalo, New York with their young son Burak last summer.  I was the last of their friends that they saw before they left.  They invited me over for dinner.  Selcuk had just finished defending his dissertation.  They begged me to come and visit them in Buffalo and say that we would all go over to Canada that is just next door.  We would also see Niagara Falls.  Selcuk is now an assistant professor and Nur has a position at a college as well.   I thought of them last night and rather missed them.  Their ghosts were there, and I asked about them.  I had been very angry with Ebru and all of the Turks but tea, cigara borek which is a Turkish pastry, and dessert had a way of softening me up.  She said that in Turkish culture it is difficult to stay mad at good friends.  If there is a split eventually the hope is to embrace again. 

I tried to explain what had happened to cause my loss of trust.  It was all filled with complexities because I am filled with complexities.  In the end I said that in the decade that all these Turks and other Muslims have come into my life and passed through, I have felt more like I a full human being than I ever had except when my maternal grandparents were alive and when I was in Botswana and was accepted by the Africans.  Americans black or white have never fully acknowledged my existence on the scale that these people have.  I wasn't seeking acknowledgement or attention, it came to me.  She told me the reason is because in many ways I am not the average American.  I never was because my grandparents never lost touch with what it means to be human.  They were still African in their ways because somehow they never lost touch with that what it is to be African and an people of the East. They left me with the best part of them like they left the best part of themselves with my mother. 

Is it good to forgive? Yes.  I am a Christian, and Jesus taught forgiveness.  I see how lack of forgiveness and jealously destroyed my father's family.   Is it good to trust?  Yes, but the world we live in is more dangerous and evil that it has been in world history.  But if we are to fully be alive, we have to try to trust somebody. 

Just before I was about to get up to leave my friends last night I found the fortune cookie in my purse...

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.   

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.

Severance

There is much conflict in my soul.  Perhaps if I write this and really open up about what I feel and the final severance that I know must come I can survive; perhaps I will feel a little better.  

I have completely distanced myself from this country and this people emotionally except for a few members of my family.  I feel nothing anymore.  Zero. No sympathy, hate, disgust, nothing.  America is an untouchable, something whose fate, good or bad, is not a matter I care about an iota.  

I see myself not as a black American or even an African American, but only as an African now.  I am an African of the Diaspora. Years of outrage and insanity passed off as normal have taken the last bit of sympathy out of me.  As far as I'm concerned even though I was born here and am the holder of an American passport, I am not an American.  I don't and never really had a totally American spirit.  I have always been someone peculiarly foreign, almost what could be defined as an exile.  

I've made a joke to my mother that perhaps I was kidnapped as an infant and was given to her.  My parents were an African king and queen, and they have been looking for me ever since.  They're still out there somewhere roaming and looking.  Perhaps her baby was switched with me.  Perhaps her baby died.  I know this probably sounded cruel to my mother even though the statement was made in jest, but there is something peculiar about me that goes beyond this place.  

I was bullied a lot as a child, and I never have really gotten over it.  I go deep within myself at times.  Sometimes this sailing away into the void was depression, shyness, rage, sarcasm, or aloofness. Over the years it has taken many forms.  


I have started to weed out people in my life little by little whom I feel have no nobility of spirit or character.  I don't want dishonest people around me.   I don't want people around who lack dignity.  I don't want people around me who are selfish and can't sense anyone's pain.  I don't want materialistic people around me who are wedded more to their gadgets than they are to humanity.  I don't want the fake humanitarians and slaves to trends around me who are silent about the wars, but are loudly vocal about animal rights or the unborn.  This kind will rescue a dog from any of the various war zones this country has proliferated, but they could care less about the widow, orphan, elderly person lost, alone and whose everyday is a trial by fire.  I don't want people around me who toy at love and in every breath devalue that glorious word more and more.  I don't want people around me who disrespect me or any black woman.  I don't want people around me who hate the African, the greatest victim of so much prosecution, betrayal, and theft.  I don't want an racist around me of any color, but I want those who will tell it like it about the racism, imperialism, and satanism that is really pushing this world over a cliff.   If you are petty or secretly crude or cruel move off from me.  If love is a game for you and breaking hearts, you need to go where your kind is welcomed.  I don't clean up people's excrement for them.  A lot of people feel their only role in life is to cover their own and other people's excrement.  That is for the servant kind, and I am not that kind of servant.  My honor comes first.  


My profession, teaching, has been spat on and defecated in this country by parents, children, and politicians,  and teachers and other people in the education field have been reduced to the level of masochists just to stay in some thing which will help pay their mortgage and keep them from ending up under a bridge. How does that make me feel?  I am beyond sadness and anger at this point. 

I wish so much that more black people in this country could have used our martyrs Dr. King and Malcolm X as models for dignity, strength, and truth.  I wish we had done all we could to learn about all the African greats that have given their lives and blood for Africa and wanted to see the Pan-African tree grow and burst into bloom. 


America hasn't earned my respect.  You can't just say you're the greatest and expect people with a higher mind to not look at your actions.  I'm sorry, but I can't be blind.  Perhaps that is my great fault living in such a society and world.   I can't allow myself to feel fully comfortable in such a twisted place of racism, naked materialism, a place that is a launching pad for war against humanity and the human spirit.


I never wanted to live and see black people to fall into so much degradation. I didn't care so much what happened to the rest of the society, but for us to fall has been more than I can bear.  I was looking at an article today about young black girls making pregnancy pacts.  This is what segments of us are producing as we look away to small and meaningless things.  We have lost everything, and I don't know if we will ever be capable of recovering ourselves. 

If America was teachable...  If America had not harden its' heart like Pharaoh, but there was always a hardness there.  Look at the history of this place.  

For me it is over.  I have thrown up my hands. The severance.

Crocodile Tears and Whitney Houston

Boo hoo hoo! Boo hoo hoo!  Please spare me the drama.  

I didn't expect that Whitney would die so young!  Why didn't you?  

This is not to rip Whitney apart since she got enough of that in the past, when it was said too many of a certain group took her away from us. This is not patting myself on the back, but I did remain a loyal fan while she still had a real singing career left. Others had started turning their backs on her before that time.  

When I learned Whitney Houston had died on Saturday at an age that is a year younger than I am, the lyrics from one of her later songs popped into my head, "It's not right, but it's okay..."  

It's really sad what we humans put ourselves through and what others will put us through. I felt so sorry for Whitney, and I wasn't surprised that she would end up dead at a young age.  After all, she was in a helluva business, facing a helluva media and helluva fickle fans.  It's just so tragic and terrible.

What I want to get to is not Whitney who made some bad choices, but I want to get to the so-called devoted fans.  There sure was a lot of noise on Twitter and Facebook Saturday night.  Was the noise genuine? I surely hope so, but I doubt some of it was.  Or was this some people's way of trying to cover their tracks after tearing another celebrity down that they had lauded, got tired of, and then cast aside?  I'm just asking these questions because I remember some ugly things that were being said some time back about WH.

Whitney had one thing in common with Michael Jackson that I noted immediately on the day of her death. Black people came out in droves crying over her demise just like they did with Michael, but where were we when these two were suffering?  I remember when Whitney became very popular with whites back in the years of her movie The Bodyguard and black folks said, "We don't like Whitney no more. She's singing for the white folks." Or "Too many white people like her, so I don't listen to her anymore." Oh yeah! One of our many little dirty secrets in this society, and especially with my generation, is that we segregate ourselves according to music too.  There is white people and black people music, and never the two shall meet, especially with some of us middle aged and older folks.

Before Whitney's marriage to Bobby Brown, some people had started questioning her sexuality.  Whitney was in her twenties, but there was never any news of her being seen with any guy.  Some folks started making the assumption she was gay because of this.  There were no suggestions that she might have just been picky or being in the business she was in where there were more whites than blacks, that maybe she didn't want to date someone white and was waiting for a black guy. The ugly assumption just popped up.  No critical thinking, just getting on the road to start tearing a star who had a innocent image down.  

Now Whitney seemed to rush to marry Bobby Brown, who's career was almost non-existent after the gossip started about her sexuality.  I did feel she had made a seriously bad move marrying him, but some whites who had  supported her started saying that Whitney had turned "ghetto" for marrying crude and rude Bobby.  


I'm not going to go much further than this, but I do want to say one word, "hypocrisy."  I was still a fan of Whitney even after her heyday.  I had no problem with her and Kevin Costner loving each other in The Bodyguard. I wish they had allowed the two characters to get married.  So there! It was almost as if Hollywood was afraid to allow it to go beyond what was a very powerful crush.  I was there when Whitney was Waiting to Exhale, so I can talk.  

We pretend so much with ourselves and others.  I see no one expressing their concern for Whitney's teenage daughter who was already experiencing problems.  I feel for this young girl because growing up a teen in America is very treacherous, and for black teens it's often painfully hard and tragic.  

Whitney is gone. She died alone too.  I believe she was the good girl that went bad.  I believe she allowed herself to be swayed by ruthless people she knew and a ruthless public, and that she dropped the best things in order to fit into a system and a way of living that leads to pain, a living death, and finally the ultimate death.  

There are lessons to be learned from the death of the beauty, Whitney Houston, but will we learn them?  I doubt it. 

Bring in the Parrots: Language Predictability and Other Insanity

The average person is pretty unimaginative.  The average is just that...Average.  Everyone does about the same thing when it's all average.  Everyone waits to copy the next boring or vulgar idea when it's all average.  Everyone says about the same thing, uses the same words when it's all average.  We live in a very average society that's falling even lower where mediocrity and evil are concerned. Not being able to communicate very well and listening to feel good messages with no depth are all very much part of the now in America.  

I'm thinking about overused words and phrases that a lot of people use.  Language can have so much beauty and depths of meaning even in a very utilitarian language like English.  No, English is not Mandarin Chinese, Arabic or Persian, but we could do much better than we do in our use of it. We could stop the linguistic laziness we've fallen over into and try to arrange our words creatively and with more thought. 

When I was younger, black people were sometimes criticized regularly for using bad English. Then when I was in graduate school, a new term came out called "Ebonics" which gave a name for black slang and BAD English.  One thing black people did manage to do and never got any credit for was make English in this country a little more colorful and complicated.  Racism and being in a kind of a isolation from the majority group, led many blacks to rebel and not want to "talk like white folks".  Black people did their own thing with English by making it colorful, raw, poetic, humorous, even deliberately changing the spelling.  Some of us even would get angry with other minorities who decided to assimilate and use terminology and voice intonation that imitated white people.  

Still I just drifted over into the race and language issue before it knew it. Really this is about words and phrases that really get on my nerves because they are over used, and when I hear people my age who are middle aged or older using them I think they must be going through a mid life crisis.  Fewer and fewer people want to grow up in America anymore, so woe to the children.  I see it everyday too when I'm not living the life of a part time hermit.

These are the overused words and phrases I keep hearing and reading, and that I despise with untold passion.

*kicking the can down the road--- A favorite with our mainstream "journalists", economic "experts," and our politicians (the respectable mafioso).  When I hear them say it I get visions of a Norman Rockwell painting the subject a little redheaded boy in overalls, barefoot, kicking a can down a dirt road that runs between two farms.  Maybe the phrase is coded. The "journalists", economic "experts", and mafioso politicians want us to be unaware and asleep to the present.  If we are naive and innocent like that little redheaded boy and believe in fairytales and wait with our bowls held out for their feel good messages not based on reality, we're more easy to handle.  

*at the end of the day--- Another favorite with the trio mentioned just above.  Maybe they think by using this near the end of their comments, they sound rhetorical or dramatic. They do kind of lean back in their chairs, if they are sitting, and nearly sigh, "at the end of the day," so languidly.  Ahhh, the actors.

*the 1% and the 99%--- These two overused statistics appeared with the Occupy Wall Street Movement which was inspired by the so-called Arab Spring or as some call it The Islamic Awakening.  We Americans don't put much thought into what we do or who we follow.  We just jump in like adolescents emotional and sentimental sans research and follow the titanic down the drain.  Yes, I'll admit that I believed in the "revolution" when it started in Egypt.  Being who I am, I haven't had a totally cushy existence that I can identify with an oppressor, but I noted the warnings from unconventional sources rather early, so now that Egypt is ruled by a junta and some say the Muslim Brother is bad news, Libya ruled by atrocity and mayhem, and some say it ain't all that terrific in Tunisia, along with the other horror shows that are playing out in the Middle East moving down from North Africa south, east, and west into sub-Sahara Africa, the thrill is totally gone.  Besides being driven by sinister elements and entities and the pitifully gullible and young, I just see it as a tragic farce, I mean fad. How do the Occupy Wall Street crowd know the rich comprise 1% for sure.  They could be .1%.  Sorry bro, but I like facts myself.  Can they prove to me we are the 99% or the 99.5%.  See what I mean?  People just jump on a bandwagon and roll.  If they had really been smart, they would have never modeled their "revolution" after the "Arab Spring".  But what do I know?

 *awesome; amazing--- I can kinda accept a teenager or someone in their 20s using these two even if it is a little grinding to hear and read over and over. I've even thrown out hints on my Facebook page to find a synonym for these words.  I'm an English teacher by profession.  I've taught in three countries and on four continents.  I come from a poetic background that goes back to reading nursery rhymes when I was a little girl to Shakespeare in high school and majoring in English literature.  I don't like to see the language trashed and brought down to the minimal.  I became even more radical about my beliefs on language being used well and expressively and not repetitiously when I began reading Sufi poetry.  

We've lost the art of conversation and debate in this culture. We just hop up with some little slogan or platitude too frequently for my tastes.  In some ways social media like Facebook cause us to communicate less and express ourselves less.  I try to use Facebook as an educational tool, and what I post is controversial at times, but I am just a fanatic about putting information out there for people to use and to contemplate.  I want people to think critically, so they can truly be free.  I don't know where "awesome" and "amazing" came from.  I suspect a movie or TV show, but it is overused.  When I hear people my age and those in their 60s using it over and over I cringe because hearing it repeatedly ain't cool.  It's past time to stop running with the crowd like you did when you were in grade school and college, and talk like an adult.  

My message in the end is to be yourself even where language is involved.  Be an individual with your own gifts that God gave you.  Stop being bland and a carbon copy.