Once Again In Turkey

Two months ago my life was totally different.  I existed in a different world.  Now I am learning to exist again in this new world where I have been several times before.  

I am back in Turkey again.  Close to three months ago I was offered a job by a language school in the city of Eskişehir  on the Anatolian (Asian) side of Turkey.  Eskişehir lies east of Istanbul sort of between that city and the capital city Ankara.  Until I came two months ago, I had never been to this city before.

In early October I took the four hour bus ride to here the next day after arriving in Istanbul, and I was the only foreigner and black person on the bus. I was strangely comfortable and very happy to just be away from America.  I absolutely find the country hideous now, and it's unlivable to me. My homesickness for there only concerns my family, especially my mother, and some minor conveniences such as having a car to put a lot of groceries in the trunk.  I also miss my books.  In Turkey I am too afraid to drive, so outside of having a vehicle to convey my groceries home, I also do not miss having a car with me.  

In August I started to apply to Turkish universities for English instructor positions. Here my masters degree will generally be adequate since I am a native speaker of English.  I knew it was very late in the year, but I send my CV to several schools anyway.  Then I learned from one of my Turkish friends on Twitter that because I'm not a Turkish citizen I would not be considered for a position at a government run Turkish institution of higher learning.  My best hope would be with private universities which Turkey has many.  By that time I had sent off my CV to several state schools, but then I took the detour and started to send them off to some of Turkey's private universities.  Spring would have been the best time to apply, but for the last few years I've been indecisive about going back to Turkey.  I feared international conflict, and Turkey has had its' share of unrest.  I finally made up my mind in the summer because my life was at a terrible stagnant point.  I had thought that maybe I would take the risk and return to teaching in the public schools back home, but the process of getting fully back in the system is nonsensical and highly unfair. The new curriculum implemented by the state and just the general quality of students in America rendered the situation highly undesirable for me.  I also wanted to go to a place where some tradition, history, and respect for teachers were still left.  Being a black person America was suffocating.  I had been told by others to get out, and I also wanted very much to flee and maybe find a sense of purpose somewhere.

I did hear from one of Turkey's better universities, Bilkent University in Ankara. I was told that my application would be kept on file and considered for the school year of 2015.  The woman who received my application materials also told me to feel free to contact her anytime.  This was in late August just before schools and universities would restart in Turkey.  I had worked for three other language schools and was very wary about dealing with anymore of them.  My negative experience had always been housing. After living in a hotel in the Beyoglu district of the Istanbul the first time I worked in the country and having to deal with a psychopathic female roommate in Izmit, I was not optimistic my try this time would be any better.  I loved working with Turkish students, and being a black person in Turkey has its' pluses at times, but Turkish language schools do not have a good reputation in some ESL forums, and my experience with the roof over my head had been negative, until this time.  

I have been in Eskişehir the city of one of Turkey's greatest poets Yunus Emre and Turkish philosopher and humorist Nasreddin Hoca for two months.  Oxford House College is my employer.  The owners are a husband and wife who are both university professors, two people I have a lot of respect for and like a lot. The manager is the niece of the owner (the husband). I like her very much as well. The school is in its' second year and trying to attract more students.  I've been encouraged to give ideas to help in attracting students.  The school is a floor in an upscale office building near the center of the city.  The books are good and the equipment (technology) for the classrooms is modern. I live in a furnished apartment just walking distance from the school. The business is family run, so the atmosphere is like a family.  One of my weekend students said last week when the class did an activity about the best and worst aspects of the city that Oxford House was where the friendliest people in the city are.  But this is Turkey and whereever I go I usually meet Turks who are friendly, courteous, curious, and helpful.  Most Turkish people cannot speak English or know very little, but even the ones who don't will try to communicate.  They want to know what nation you are from.  I never hear anyone call me black here, the Turkish word is "siyah."  I just hear "foreign" (yabancı).  

Getting acclimated to Turkey again has been difficult this time.  I am older now and going through what can be a difficult period for a woman. This year I really was struck hard by the affects of perimenopause.  At times my emotions are like a seesaw, but I try to fight off the doldrums, and I have support both here and back home.  

Before I came to Turkey this time around I heard from schools in Bursa, Erzurum, Konya, all in Turkey, and I also heard from schools in China.  I applied directly to schools, and did not come here under the auspices of any program. I also advertised myself once again on ESL Teachers Board and Dave's ESL Cafe as I've done in the past.  How I connected with my current employer through an advertisement was that posted on ESL Teachers Board saying that they were seeking a native English speaker to teach classes and for anyone who was interested to send an e-mail for information.  I did so in late July or early August, and didn't hear anything until about a month later.  I had almost forgotten that I had answered the advertisement e-mail by that time.  

In less than a month and a half of job of searching I had heard from a few language schools and one university.  There are educated people in the US who have searched for jobs for years and cannot find anything. In fact the news is that many people have given up completely on finding work in the US and that the government tries to hide how bad things really are by not including the ones who ceased looking by not mentioning their numbers in unemployment statistics.  Many people are also so frustrated by the climate on many jobs in the states that they don't want to work.  When my uncle died just before I came to Turkey I was talking to one of my cousins.  She hadn't worked in two years and is college educated. Before her father (my uncle) died of cancer, she had helped her mother to take care of him. My cousin is about 56 years old, and she is not old or in poor health from what I can see, but she told me she doesn't want to work.  She hinted that since she has no family and obligations that she doesn't feel an urge to work. I felt sad for her. She isn't a very old person. Surely there is something she would like to do besides watching TV everyday or being on a computer.  On American jobs there is often the feeling of isolation and competition.  Some people reject this climate, and don't want to work.  Yes, plenty of people are lazy, but some just don't care for the atmosphere on a lot of American jobs. On all the Turkish jobs where I've worked I never noticed this coldness and competition to the extent I've it seen in the US.  The isolation, backstabbing, and just general iciness will wear people down.  Most Americans never grow out of being in very tight cliques that are suspicious or hostile to new comers.  But that is the way it is back home, and why the overall society has drifted so far into abnormality.  Turkey like everywhere has shortcomings, but here humanity still lives unlike in the US where only a tiny minority of people are trying to retain what is sane and good.  

I will end here.  There is so much to tell, and I hope to become more active on this blog now that I have a lot to write about and am eager to share my thoughts and experiences.  Certainly I am in a place where there are little wonders daily, and those little wonders restore my faith in humanity. 

You Are in My Bloodstream

*Sorry again for the white highlights in this post.

How does it happen that someone can get inside another person's bloodstream?   Can it still happen in these times of selfishness and alienation?  Is it still possible to love someone intensely and they will love you back allowing you to climb over and jump into their bloodstream?  

Lately I have been thinking a lot of the beautiful words from the Bible book of Ruth in which Ruth tells her mother-in-law Naomi:

"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God."

These words came about after the death of Ruth's husband.  Naomi tells her to turn and go back to her own country and remarry over there.  Today some will say this is strange for a woman to tell another woman unless perhaps there are some homosexual tendencies, all in the ignorance of only being able to see life beyond how it is today especially in the West with its' empty relationships and lack of values.  In my parents' generation there were often life time friendships and marriages.  People were loyal. People did not allow their egos, their personal ideologies to rule and ruin everything.   I am sure it was certainly like that in Ruth's era.  

Today in the country where I live I am the majority, a single person alone.  It got this way because fewer and fewer people would not allow themselves to think and do more like Ruth. Ruth swallowed her pride and loved her mother-in-law I believe in a pure and respectful way, and because she did, followed Naomi to her homeland, and even worked to support herself and Naomi in Boaz's field, and because of this she found a good husband in Boaz. Naomi was in Ruth's bloodstream and it all led to a better future for her.  She did not have too much pride and reject her mother-in-law's advice when she told her to go where Boaz was sleeping, lie at his feet, and then plead her case as a poor widow.  Boaz had heard of Ruth's loyalty and had seen her working in his fields, so he married her after she came to him.  It didn't all end with Ruth's and Boaz's marriage and in their lifetime either. Centuries later Jesus/Issa was born from their lineage.  We have to find the good and lasting things somehow in this life.  We must find the right person's bloodstream to climb into, and if it is the right one he or she will also climb into our bloodstream.  It will not end since true love and loyalty never dies. 

I love Sufi poetry.  The Sufi poets talk almost always about love, a spiritual love that returns back up to Allah.  Allah is the Arabic name for God, and even Middle Eastern Christians call Him Allah, so I have started thinking more often of HIm as Allah.  There is nothing wrong with the name.  But as for love in Sufi poetry, I believe it can also apply to the human, men and women, a higher and joyful love that is rare to come by but is possible to come by. Rumi wrote, 'Dance in your blood.'   Abu Said Abil Khair wrote, 'Love came flowed like blood beneath the skin, through veins emptied me of myself filled me with the Beloved.'  This is divine love and because in this culture and society we rarely find any balance and have any divine love we cannot connect with people the right way.  People have sex first, but they never connect on a psychological and spiritual level.  We cannot find a lasting love with another person because of this.  Love today is attached too much to the material and the self.  No one wants to become transparent and selfless because they have been taught that to become so you are being weak, you are giving someone else power over you, it is far too dangerous to trust anyone. So we end up alone.  

 All this matter about love and being inside someone's bloodstream and they in return, came into my mind this morning after I fell asleep briefly following an asthma attack.  I have been an asthmatic for several years now.  The only time it faded away was when I lived in Turkey, which seemed to have a climate conducive to eradicating it.  But this summer it seems to be fading away even here.  My asthma is also tied to my emotions.  I can get upset or fearful and then an attack will come. Autumn has arrived in the air this week especially at night and in the mornings.  I slept with my window open over night to get some fresh air.  This morning I felt stressed and sad, and I had an attack, so I took my inhaler, prayed, and fell asleep. For some years I had stopped having dreams, but this year I have started to dream again. Often they are nondescript which I cannot remember, but I recalled my dream this morning.  I had lost something I loved. I will not say what.  I was panicking and suffocating in my dream.  It seemed so real, and then I woke up.  I felt so much happiness and relief that the dream was not true.  After I had fully awaken the idea of the bloodstream and love came to mind. 

I have allowed myself to love in this life and be really hurt.  I have witnessed people who do not know how to love and who take their spouses for granted. They are attached while I remained alone too prideful to admit I was lonely.  In the past I allowed someone to get into my bloodstream, but I was not in his, I believe.  Perhaps if I had been more patient and not left he might have matured and climbed into mine into my bloodstream.  He was not an American or a Westerner and was from a culture where many people are not afraid to be close and communicate.  I don't know though.  I blame myself for so much at this point in my life, but I also blame the society I was born into that was ready to place the cuffs on the day I was born.  

Now I do not know if it is a waste of time to hope that someone will ever see me as worthy enough to climb into my bloodstream.  I feel that I can make the climb, but will I be wasting my time and be devastated again? I tend to give so much, put my heart into things. 

I've gotten used to devastation and unfairness.  It does hurt to feel that my life has been cursed because I was born in the wrong place and time.  I just smile and somehow try to live the rest of what's left of my life.  I really hope the river will flow to the sea of love if there is any possibility left in this world.  You are in my bloodstream.

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gangnam Style in the Classroom: Randoms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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.