Black Belt Commonsense

I can’t speak for outside the states but here in the US, we do not have our own media. No one says reparations NOW! And certainly no one says fire ALL of the white cops from elsewheres patrolling and brutalizing Black spaces! No one regularly talks about how the cops and CIA flood Black spaces with drugs and guns. Our wittle social media pages are not enough. And not having a media would be ok if we still had investigative reporters like Gary Webb with integrity uncovering these evils.  As it stands now, that CHASE barge busted with 20 tons/ 40,000 lbs of cocaine has garnered no arrests and no convictions and no one’s looking into it! And since Gary Webb was murdered with two bullets to the brain where the coroner labeled it a suicide, not too many people are lined up for that position! Now we have a lot of Blackety Black (white sponsored) venues pretending. It’s the difference between managing racism and ending it. Can’t wait ‘til we have our own media. Everything changes.

Who’s responsible for flooding drugs and guns into Black spaces? The same ones capable of making a CHASE barge busted with 20 tons/ 40,000lbs of cocaine vanish with no arrests and no convictions.

White people had us playing Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes and Johnny Cochran. When they found the cops who lynched Sandra Bland, they needed to have all faced the death penalty, since Texas is a death penalty state, along with Dylann Roof and the cop, Michael Slager. We're essentially dealing with cowards who roust about women and unarmed men where if they don't use guns, they're in large groups. If we’d put them ALL on death row, these murders and church bombings would have ceased.  Cowards do not sign up to be martyrs for the cause of hate - and that's what Sandra called them; although she used more colorful language. The death penalty can't only be for the Ted Bundys of the world...and black people. And since it is in this unjust society, we need to fire ALL of the white cops from elsewheres! It’s like there’s some sort of spell preventing folk from seeing the obvious. Either we break the spell or the spell breaks us. Can’t wait ‘til we have our own media. Every...

Instead of a Black History Month, I wish we had a Black Privilege Month. Where if you're a cop who murders an unarmed Black person in the month of February, the media treats it like it matters. The Journal calls us the ‘most innocent of victims’. The Post calls the cop an 'animal that needs to be put down'. The Times lists 'all the reasons why you should get the chair'. Trump takes out a one page ad in the Daily News saying, 'I'll put the needle in myself!' The Enquirer airs all your dirty laundry...literally! Even Fox News weighs in: 'Didn't they know it was February?'

Community policing ONLY!  Fire ALL of the white cops from elsewheres and train and hire within with mandates from the community itself and watch 95% of our newsfeed just **poof** disappear. The following is back in my more naive days (4 years ago) when I believed that equal justice was a remote possibility: "We're desensitized to so many things. We're not shocked that a cop would manhandle a woman in this way. We're not shocked in the Mayberry way he handled the first car (with the white woman) in the long video and the Gestapo way he manhandled Sandra, 'I will light you up!' Our media, when we get it, will label this cop and others like him - COWARD! We're not shocked that the Black female cop backs his story even though we see from the cam that she wasn't even there! Or how cops murder our CHILDREN (not yours!) while playing in a gazebo clearly lying about warning him 3x in the space of less than 2 seconds! That the racist coroner quickly labels [Sand...

The trouble with those who say 'we're all in this together' is that they view their issues as a rallying cry while everyone else's divide our strength.  'Suck it up for the greater good' they say, and in time all needs will get met. This thinking was old in the 60's and we brothers do the same towards the injustices Black women face due to our misogynoir conditioning.  It's the white liberal version of trickle down and it needs to die the death!

If Snopes was impartial: Garner was killed for selling loosies. Snopes: Eric Garner was murdered by cop for, as Jesse Williams says, acting free.  There were no loose cigarettes found on his person or in his vehicle. The only thing illegal was the arrest for resisting arrest and the unlawful choke hold which the cops, the courts and the media all agreed was a legal takedown maneuver.  Not once have I seen ANYONE use Snopes to correct in favor of the black victim. NOT ONCE! Well... there was the one time when Snopes pointed out that the cops and the media were lying about Philando Castile's record so I can never say NEVER. But track record-wise, they’re racism lite.

We had a chance when Obama did speak up about Harvard prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. being arrested for entering his own home. But 'so called' black leaders like Dr. Boyce Watkins refused to back him and even called it cronyism,  when every Black person in america (and not a few white people) knew that if he were white.. And the hashtags from Trayvon on down soon followed while Boyce’s presence coincidentally blew up - and he NEVER apologized. It’s like there’s some sort of spell... Can't wait 'til we have our own media. Everything changes.

At some point, you have to decide which america you choose to live in. Whether it is the despotic america of your fathers before you that claims freedom but declares by its actions that  white is right, locks up more citizens than any other nation on the planet, funnels our taxes into an unrivaled war machine, manipulates our ideologies and beliefs to hate,  stagnates science and technology for profit and bombs nations that haven't done a thing to us for our own self interests or one that adheres to justice, truth, mercy and innovation for ALL of its citizens and those abroad. Choose wisely.

There are too many 'learners' on my page. They learn what to say and what not to say and adjust their language with the time but never truly repent; rarely take the first step of acknowledgment or saying, 'I'm sorry.' They never begin the arduous task of peeling back the layers of denial, deception and indoctrination and so settle for the comfort of conformity rather than embracing the harsh light of clarity. And every bitter tactic that's exposed, instead of equating it with their shame and letting it fall, becomes yet another burden for which they must grudgingly adjust. Hearts, once hardened cannot be un-hardened; they must break.

Mansplaining example: Most of the items I repost come from women (mainly Black women). And if you've ever received my generic, 'Thanks, so and so. Reposting.' or seen 'From so and so's post.' in my comment area, that's who I mean.  But when I do it, I get 'likes' and 'shares' and accolades saying, 'Ooh, how perceptive! I NEVER saw it that way before!' While many originators get silence, the b word, the c word and EVEN the N word along with threats to their person and their practice or business!   And many of them are professors, doctors, successful entrepreneurs and the like! But let them speak up and it's, 'Who are you?!?' and 'I question your credentials!' While I have zero credentials and have never received any bile beyond, 'You're overreacting'  or 'What you said was hateful!'  Oh, you wounded me! (Actually, they did wound me because I am human and they did hurt my feelings. #Blackfeelingsm...

Bobby Kennedy famously said that 40 years later, we may see a Black President. I initially thought that his words were prescient, given the advent of Obama, but Baldwin set me straight. Baldwin paraphrased: Here’s a guy and his family who just got off the boat yesterday, his brother becomes president today and says that in 4 decades, we might get there too. The arrogance of racism! But that’s not what I want to talk about. You see, I’d stack the wisdom and insights of Baldwin against and Black man of ANY era, including today’s and come out on top. But Baldwin was personal friends with Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and later Alice Walker and yet he STILL chose to put the plight of Black women on the backburner for the sake of the ‘greater good’ of our shared civil rights. So if the greatest male kind of ANY time would not listen to his friends, who happened to be the sharpest female minds of ANY day, what hope is there for the rest of us fellas? I have brothers on my page ...

I remember Henry Louis Gates Jr. being arrested by cop for entering his own home. I also remember a lot of so-called Blackety Black (white sponsored) news outlets like Dr. Boyce Watkins’ Your Black World and Tavis Smiley calling what Obama did cronyism instead of the racism that was right in front of our lying eyes. If we had banded together back then, we could’ve stopped many of the hashtags that followed. Oh well.

When they compare conservative vs liberal narratives, the 2nd seems less racist to the first...but it’s not: “African Americans have been dying from COVID-19 at three times the rate of their white counterparts.  Republican Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman, a physician, asked if the “colored population” was more susceptible to the coronavirus due to a lack of hand-washing, lack of social distancing or a lack of wearing masks.  He was later fired from his emergency room job over the remarks. Liberal: The answer is that African Americans are “more susceptible” to COVID-19 due to a systemic lack of access to Health care,  lack of testing and being disproportionately representative in jobs that do not allow the luxury of working from home.“ Our media: “When they say ‘due to a systemic lack of healthcare’, that’s white-speak for  ‘Doctors, nurses and admin turned us away 3 and 4 times to further infect all of our family and neighbors’. When I see a title with melanin and the ...

How about we fire the white cops from elsewheres who murder unarmed Black men, women and CHILDREN with impunity? How about we not bomb countries that haven't done a thing to us? How about we prosecute rapist students to the fullest extent of the law so that 20% of women don't CONTINUALLY get sexually assaulted in our institutions of higher learning? What if we gave white men the needle for executing Black men, women and CHILDREN? Do you think the death penalty would still be on the books then? What if christians not only read the bible but actually did what it said? What if we stop listening to the media's narrative designed to control and manipulate and start adhering to our senses, in particular our sense of right and wrong and our commonsense? Can't wait 'til we have our own media. Everything changes.

Making the laws equal for everyone is not radical; it's the standard.  You want to stop black church bombings? Put cop Slager on death row for killing Scott. Give Roof the needle for his mass murder in a church. Anything less in a death penalty state is racism.  When white folk are executed for killing Black people, then the church burnings will stop. It’s like there’s some sort of spell preventing folk from seeing the obvious. Either we break the spell or the spell breaks us. Can't wait 'til we have our own media. Everything changes.

So... Took a month hiatus from posting or commenting on social media (while still checking my newsfeed).  However you fight these evils, I’m all for it. As a christian, I’ve been a part of virtual prayer walks beginning at 6:30am lasting to as late as nine (every single day including once a week fasting), where we’re praising God and confessing our sins while the fellowship of brothers are shaping me up. In the evenings, I go for solo prayer walks. The goal is to be a part of a 24 hour prayer chain (I’d be happy to take the wee hours). But here’s the clinch; repentance needs to mainly be about us men repenting about our long-standing, ingrained misogynoir (hatred of Black women) conditioning. This may seem extreme to some, but if you come after these strongholds, evil is not just gonna roll over and show you it’s belly! And while my focus will be on repenting of my misogynoir conditioning, the same mandates on my page are firm: 1. Reparations NOW! 2. Fire ALL of the white cops from...