Black Leaders

I hear it all the time, “There are no Black leaders.” There are plenty of Black leaders but there are no Black followers. The civil rights movement was a movement against an oppressor. The movement of today has to be one of consciousness. We have to dismantle the beliefs that hold us captive. It’s easy to form a movement when the enemy doesn’t look like you. How do you establish a movement when the enemy is staring you in the mirror?

There are plenty of people out here with messages of enlightenment but our messages aren’t pretty, aren’t popular, they aren’t even easy to digest. The beliefs that we have that are killing us are ones that were beaten into us for hundreds of years. They are so deeply ingrained in our psyches, so much a fabric of our belief systems, that people would rather die then to change the things that are killing us.

I don’t know why I have been given this vision. I used to be like the masses. I used to be just like the people that rally against me; I accepted what my mother told me, what her parents had told her, what had been passed down for generations since the first generation of slaves were born in this country. Africans who were enslaved could hold on to truth, hold on to traditions. Slaves born in this country had their consciousness shaped by the most oppressive form of chattel slavery known to man. No one except for a few of us can acknowledge it but I know it to be true. I know that the psychological ravages that occurred during slavery are what keep us so dysfunctional. I see it clearly but the masses insist that that which is most dysfunctional is healthy and right.

Who is willing to stand up and say, “Hmmm, it’s not healthy for me to hate my natural hair. I will forever be in conflict if I inherently hate that which The Creator intended me to be.” We already know that men aren’t capable of hearing constructive criticism, yes criticism, without claiming they are being bashed. Their behavior collectively is foul, immature, and far too often abhorable. Yes, Black men need to be spanked, disciplined, and criticized and they need to step up to the plate and start correcting their shit. Black men don’t want to be criticized at all. They want to hold on to oppressive, misogynist, homophobic, sexist, dysfunctional beliefs and defend them to the death. They feel as if they get a free ride because of their penis to never have to look in the mirror and correct their own stankness.

I can name all the things that make us unhealthy and people will find 1002 reasons to justify the most fucked up beliefs. Black men and their obsession with light skin and long hair, black women holding on to the irrational and detrimental “strong black woman” archetype, our abusive child rearing practices, our obsession with money, the way we see sex, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US is infected by belief systems that are tainted with poison, myself included. The way we raise our children is wrong, the way we eat is wrong, the God we serve is wrong, everything we’ve learned since our enslavement is crippling to us and is dead wrong. Those of us that are working to free ourselves from those chains are the leaders, fighting a war against ignorance. Ignorance reigns supreme in this land. I’m working on mine every day. I’ve made miraculous transformations. I’m open to learning from people who are more enlightened than I, who’ve made miraculous transformations in their lives. There are so few people who have but the knowledge is out there. Even those of us who have freed ourselves from some of the bonds are still enslaved, thinking that we have achieved perfection. I’m still searching, I’m still seeking truth, I’m still meditating and affirming that I am open and receptive to Thy loving spirit of Truth.

I had a conversation with a woman yesterday, a woman with whom I’ve had a very adversarial relationship. I asked her if she had any women friends. And she said not really. I asked why and she went on to say that women were catty, manipulative, and only concerned about dick. That sort of thinking is so warped and dysfunctional it’s scary. It’s the ultimate form of self-hatred. Hating women when you are one ranks like 785 on a pathological scale of 1-10. All of a sudden, it was perfectly clear why our relationship had been so contentious. It’s a pathology that is pervasive, I’d dare to say that the majority of black women harbor thoughts like that. She claims that the only reason she has women friends now is because she became more egotistical and selfish. She thinks that’s healthy. This whole, “women are untrustworthy, women are evil” drama is infinitely pathological. She went on to say, “Yeah, those women who don’t like other women are really sad.” She couldn’t even see how fucked up she was for trying to attack other women.

I lost a dear friend because he refused to look at his own fucked up patterns. Rather than deal with his own shit, he attacks everyone else. He repeats the same dumb behaviors all the time and then goes into severe depression and his solution is that he’s NEVER going to be in another relationship again. That lasts for two weeks. He would rather attack me, me who’s been nothing but nice to him, rather than deal with his own shit.

When the demons are internal, it’s virtually impossible to get people to change. Who’s going to go to a sit in for healing self-hatred? Uhmmm, no one. We can’t fight any outside system of oppression until we heal ourselves and we ain’t trying to heal ourselves. To do that, we have to say that what we know and who we are is flawed. We aren’t flawed because of our own doing, we are flawed because of the system of slavery. But to get people to see that is next to impossible. Trust me, I know.

You can’t have a leader when people are tied to dysfunction and refuse to change. People refuse to listen to logic. Sometimes, I wish I was still unconscious. Sometimes I wish I didn’t see things the way I do now. Ignorance is truly bliss.