ARE WE GONNA BE BOYS OR MEN?

MAN STUFF:

Today I saw various pics in groups I belong to of supposedly single women. Quite a few had the question "smash or pass?" One in particular was posted by a really physically beautiful Sister. My response? To paraphrase my response was it depends or whether you're trying to build or just satisfy an itch, cause I'm trying to build. Is it out here for everyone or someone special? Yes you are fine, but I need more. Needless to say, this was not the same response that post and others like it generated.

Brothers, we must stop OUR thirsty behavior online. Everytime we like a pic of a female with her a-- and breasts out we condone her thinking she is predominately, if not solely, valued because of her body; that its ok to exploit her body even if it dehumanizes her; that the beauty of her physical is more important than that of her mind and Spirit; that sex and lust are our driving forces and not healing, family and re/building our community.

Let me be clear; sex and thinking someone is sexy are not the problems. Sex is natural, beautiful and if done properly can be healing. What's wrong is the reduction of our Sisters (and for ladies the Brothers), mothers, cousins, aunties to their body parts; us acting with pure animal lust as if we are beasts not men, our lack of accountability for our actions and our failure to accept the responsibility for whatever consequences our actions cause (children, etc). Today let us make up our minds to be MEN, to think like MEN, to speak and write like MEN and to ACT LIKE MEN.

BE THE CHANGE YOU SEEK IN OUR COMMUNITIES.

ON THE PASSING OF NELSON MANDELA (1918-2013)

Today the world honored the memory of Nelson Rohilelah "Madiba" Mandela. Politicians and freedom fighters alike came together in the pouring rain to pay tribute to his Spirit and the exemplary service he provided as one of many who gave up much so that their countrymen and women alike might enjoy the fruits of their lands. As freedom loving peoples mourn the loss of this great fighter for the cause of freedom, justice and equality in his beloved South Africa, we who are left here must remember that the war against tyranny, exploitation and injustice continues.

Until people everywhere have an equal say and stake in the politics, economics and cultural output of the lands they live in none of us can rest on our laurels.  Until all people,  especially African peoples, are treated with respect and dignity they are deserving of we must not stop fighting.

We must also stay ever aware that the spin factories of Western propaganda will not fail to seize this moment to further their agenda.  Despite the current wave of hoopla we must remember that Mandela was just a (hu)man,  overall a good man, but a man nevertheless.  This needs to be said; our youth must be taught that any of them could easily be another Mandela, Winnie, Malcolm, Betty, Martin,  Corretta,  Medgar, Myrlie, Ella,  Fannie Lou, Adam, Stokely/Kwame, Assata, Fred or any other of the thousands of leaders by their work that have given so much in the defense of right; all they need do to start is stand up.

This needs to be said, for the media machine will have us believe these people were anomalies, rare and unique among their kind - the truth is far from that.  Each of these people was the sum of the knowledge, leadership training, courage and conviction molded into them from past generations and forged in what Martin Luther King Jr described as "the zeitgeist" of their times. Today,  more than ever, we need them to understand the cloth from which they were cut... we need them to realize what Public Enemy rapped when they told us "don't believe the hype." The message, simply put: We are not in a "post racial" world, racism/oppression/White Supremacy in its worst, deceptively subliminal form is as strong as ever and the world needs strong and committed men, women, boys and girls of all hues and ethnicities to stand against it.

So yes, let's take a moment to honor the best this fallen warrior gave to us... but when the moment has passed let us remember to pick back up the pens, swords, law books, guns, bibles, Qu'rans, microphones, cameras, cowry shells, cell phones,  etc. that were temporarily lain aside to continue our quest to remove those whom would prevent us from being whole as our Creator made us. Ase!

On the question "Are Blacks More African Than American?" posted by RK Byers on NewsOne.com

by Charles Mitchell

Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 11:34pm

To paraphrase Malcolm X: If you take a pregnant cat out of its natural environment and put it in an oven, she doesn't give birth to biscuits, her children remain what they were went she went in - cats/kittens.

Some may call us African-Americans, Black Americans, negroes, etc but WE ARE AFRICANS; though some of us born here in the US may share Native American and/or some European heritage; most of our essential cultural traits (language structure and remnant words from our original clans, family structure, style of cooking and foods, ways of thought and expression, Spiritual practices, ways of celebration, medicinal practices, etc.) are the same as those of Africans worldwide - in Brazil, Cuba and the Caribbean, Honduras, Belize, the UK, etc.

In the US we celebrate Mardi Gras, in Brazil they do Carnival, in the Caribbean they have Junkanoo, Carnival/Mas, Cropover, etc - these are the African practice of celebrating the first harvest

In the US we eat collard greens, in the Caribbean they eat callaloo, in Liberia they have cassava leaf.

In the US we commonly speak slang or Ebonics or Creole, in Haiti and French speaking Black/African countries they speak Kreyole/Creole, in Honduras the Africans speak Garifuna, in Brazil they speak Brazilian Portuguese, in Nigeria they speak Pidgin English - all these languages expressions of the African culture working in the constraints of the dominating culture. I hope you get the point...

We should not confuse who we are with the changes that have been made to accommodate ecology, invasion, extraction, rape, urbanization, etc. You might say "We are different from the continental African"; that does not make us not African; the so called African-American from the rural South is different than the one in the urban North - hell even different from the one in the urban South! Does that make them not one and the same? NO

Thick_Mami_Wit_Class, Mad-Hatter85, BLACKSPEAK, jazzwatch, Zeru25  (yes, Zeru too the "middle east" is Africa so guess what?  The Israelites are African!) - everyone who has posted WE ARE ALL ONE.

You should know that You/We are part of a WORLDWIDE PEOPLE - even those on the continent - struggling against tremendous oppression, domination and exploitation; struggling and succeeding in continuing to build families, feed them, clothe them, teach them; its true that things are not perfect, we do suffer worldwide from having the poorest communities, the highest rates of various illnesses per our population, economic instability, etc. - but we are succeeding just by the fact that we continue to exist! No one else has been through what we have, not European Jews, not the Bosnians, not the Gypsies, horrifically not even the Native American! Our lands taken over, our women raped (on and off the continent), forced commerce, languages and artificial barriers imposed upon us, some of us taken off the land, mixed up, forced to work from sun up to sun down, given the worst food, denied education, forced to buy ourselves out of Enslavement, some arrested/captured and made slave again, forced to breed for master, hiding our traditional practices in the symbols of the church, hiding the codes to tell others when we plan to escape in the songs of the church and field hollers... No! We've been through too much for you to deny your Ancestors their right to be who they were when they came here!

You/We are African people! We may not know what clan/tribes we're from, we may not know the original languages, but not knowing who you are doesn't make you not who you are. YOU ARE THE FIRST PEOPLE GOD PUT ON THIS GREEN EARTH. Claim it!

Now as far as "African-Americans" and those of the Diaspora thinking they are/can be the salvation of Africa what many of you don't know is that the traditional Elders and even some in the governments of Africa think that. It has been divined in the teachings and readings of Spiritual workers IN AFRICA that we will bring the bank of knowledge that we have attained under the West - and this includes the Africans that have come here in 20th century voluntarily (for school, as refugees, etc.). You/We have gifts to share and a responsibility to share them with our family back on the continent; more than that you/we have a duty to bring our Ancestors back to the mother continent SPIRITUALLY (no you don't have to dig up their bones and bring them back) so they may have peace.

The continent of Africa needs us and we need it; there's no other land mass with as much natural resource richness as Africa -one of the main reasons Europeans help keep it destabilized so they can exploit our fractured governments. There are no other people besides us Africans of the Diaspora that can share with the African continental the missing pieces of their story, the technical knowledge, the story of struggle to get back home or simply to be free - Marcus Garvey from Jamaica was inspired by Booker T. Washington; Kwame Nkrumah was inspired by what he learned at Lincoln University and in Harlem; the ANC of South Africa and many other African freedom fighters and organizations were inspired by the founding of the NAACP, the Civil Rights struggle, the NOI, and Malcolm X's called for the Human Rights of the "Afro-American". YOU AND YOUR ANCESTORS HAVE INSPIRED MUCH OF THE WORLD TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM.

Yes, and We the Diasporans need Africa, the spiritual and medicinal resources Africa has can finally heal our deep wounds, Post Traumatic Stress and modern ailments in a way Western psychology and medicine could never (and would never b/c of greed) do in 100 sessions. We need to go back through those dungeons and out to bring the Ancestors home. We need to touch the soil. We need to go home and see, and remember why we do some of the things we do w/o knowing how African we really are. We need to touch the soil there to remember all humans must have land of their own to build upon, grow food upon, build communities and raise families on, without fear and oppression.

Finally I must say that no empire goes on forever, unpunished for its crimes. America is an Empire and it will fall, as all Empires fall. You can attach yourself to it if you want but I know who I am. Any questions?