A Dead End

The system of white supremacy has crippled and crushed the Black community.  We are living in the end times.  Not in terms of some mythological savior coming back and sweeping up all the good Christians to go to heaven but we have now reached the end of hope, the end of advancement, the end of the struggle towards freedom, education, and enlightenment as a people. 

White people, with their racist agendas and their control of the legislative and educational systems have created a nation of Black people who are tragically educationally handicapped.   It’s been a multi-pronged, very intentional process that has been in place for four decades or more.  Kudos to them, their foresight, their dedication to keeping Black people stupid.  I give “them,” those with true power, those pulling the strings behind the scenes have restructured the educational system to the point of annihilation, all the credit in the world.  Along with the music industry, the illuminati or whomever pulls the read strings in this country have handicapped Black people to the point we wallow in stupidity and celebrate it. 

Black students no longer learn.  They don’t develop academically.   They regurgitate meaningless information and fill in circles with #2 pencils on tests but they don’t learn to reason, use logic, they don’t hone their discernment skills.  They repeat what they hear in soundbites.  They don’t read, explore, or research, they tweet.  They don’t watch the news, they don’t expand their consciousness beyond their dismal ghetto mentality reality.  And ghetto mentality has now metastasized into every socio-economic strata; it’s no longer a designation of income but of a mentality of stagnation, stupidity, and conformity.  If someone says it, “it’s the gospel truth” as long as the majority agree with it. 

The media has shaped our consciousness.  We don’t know Black history.  We don’t have a historical context to understand nor do we have the skills to understand how things connect to one another and create outcomes and consequences.  The educational system has done a great job in making sure the Black people only think linearly and don’t have the ability to question what they are told, read (if they read at all), complex concepts are foreign to Black people now.   The educational standards are dramatically and drastically lower.  What is an A in today’s public school system wouldn’t even be a C in the educational system of my day.  What passed for an A in my day wouldn’t have been a C a half a century earlier.  Students don’t do homework, don’t do projects, they don’t read books.  They don’t play musical instruments, they don’t create art, they don’t do anything but play video games and watch TV.  We rely on technology to the point of stupidity.  We wouldn’t know how to survive without wifi and we are quite proud of that.  Our educations are one dimensional.

Kudos to the elite whites who saw the potential dangers of integrating the educational system.  Sure, some white students have slipped through the cracks, a decent percentage of white students have been educationally handicapped by the lowered standards of the public school system but they have whiteness on their side.  When they graduate from college, they are more likely to get a job.  Hell, they don’t even have to graduate from college.  White men with a criminal record are more likely to get a job than a Black man with a degree.  You can rest assured that the rich white students, the ones in private schools and in public schools where there is hardly a black face in the student body are getting the best education possible.  You can bet your bottom dollar that what white students in affluent neighborhoods are learning in the fourth and fifth grades Black students aren’t “learning” at all.  They might not be taking advantage of that education.  They might be letting their privilege and the fallacy of white supremacy convince them that they don’t have to learn but KNOW that they are being taught things that Black students who graduate have never been expose to. 

“But they are learning European education.  They are learning the white man’s history,” you say.  Well, at least they are learning that.  Black students aren’t learning anything.  They aren’t learning European history or Black history.  It’s your job as a parent to teach them their history but you aren’t teaching your children anything.  Largely because you weren’t taught anything.  And here’s the rub.  Tell a Black student that they are the best of the best, tell them that they are on the honor roll and that they smart when they have been under and mis-educated and you will have an adult who believes that they know everything, that they don’t have to read or learn or research or study in life.  Combine that with the cheating, “get over” mentality that consumes Black people and you have a league of idiots who are going to wallow in mediocrity and dysfunction. 

I "Be Like" Confused

I feel stupid asking these sorts of questions constantly but I really need someone to explain to me the objection Black people have to using correct grammar.  Is it because it's too many words to use and they feel that they can communicate more effectively by completely eliminating parts of speech so as to be more concise?  Is it because speaking correct English conforms to a European standard and to be "really" Black is to rebel against the slave master's language by butchering his language?  Black people embrace every other thing the slave master beat into us: his religion, his standards of beauty, his social mores, but I’m supposed to believe that we are rallying against prepositions and dangling particles because the white man gave it to us?   

I've heard the argument that Black people are simply replicating the patterns of speech from West Africa and even ancient KMT but that's absurd.  We don't replicate anything else from Africa, why only speech patterns.  And maybe I’m the only one who can see the obvious but it seems clear to me and anyone with half a brain that Black peopel are clearly replicating the speech patterns of the slave, not the West African.  Is there some moral objection to speaking correctly I'm unaware of?  I'm really confused why conjugating verbs seems to be so offensive for Black people.  I don't want to assume it's only because the educational system has handicapped us to be inarticulate.   I know that schools in Black neighborhoods aren’t held to the same standards as those in rich, white neighborhoods but it CAN'T be because we don't know that they are speaking incorrectly because everyone has a television and access to  . . . . Oh wait . . . I think I just partially answered my own question.  Almost every Black TV show, movie, and certainly every Black song on the radio butchers the English language beyond recognition to some sort of ghetto code so it's very likely that people just don't comprehend that they are not speaking correctly; they believe that they are using the English language in its correct usage. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm super Black.  I'm Blackety, Black, Black, Power-to-the-People, Raise-Your-Fist-in-Defiance, Red, Black, and Green, Black.  Not once have I ever considered my correct usage of the English language anything other than an effective tool for communication. I don't think, and maybe I'm wrong but it doesn't make sense to me, that using multi-syllabic vocabulary words makes me a sellout.  I use the correct tools when I garden.  I use the correct tools when I sew. I don't think that using a Frisbee and a can of sterno will enable to make a gourmet meal because those aren't the proper utensils. I use the correct tools when I speak and when I write so that I might be able to effectively communicate my thoughts and feelings to others.  It seems to me that the Black community is wallowing in butchering the English language and proud to do so because they . . . I'm not sure why they are so intent on slaughtering the English language, thus the formulation of my question.  Communication is the foundation for the way we interact with people and it appears to me that Black folk are content with third grade linguistics and not much more. 

Acting Black

I hear people complain, not my personal circle of friends but others on the net, that they are looked down upon by their friends for speaking well, for “acting white”.  That’s not necessarily true either.  I’ve had friends make those sorts of comments and criticisms and then I remind them that their particular circle of friends are all educated and articulate.  They don't really get that comment directed at them, they only pretend that they do so they can be included in the number of outraged and offended who have nothing better to do on the internet but complain about "those Black people."   It seems true however, that a great many people in our community still feel that to be educated is to be a sellout, is to “act white”. 

I have had several personal experiences where when I contradict someone’s misguided and tragically flawed logic or opinion, they tell me that going to college and getting a higher education doesn’t make me smarter than them.  I understand that as a defense mechanism, an attempt to make themselves feel validated and to lesson my arguments by believing that years of study, research, and reading have no impact on one’s body of knowledge.  It is, however, nothing more than a defense mechanism with not one iota of validity. Yes, going to college, studying, makes me more informed.  You might have common sense and you might be street smart but thinking you know about subjects that you haven't studied, getting your "knowledge" about subjects from listening to Michael Baisden, no, that does not mean you are more informed than I am. 

I’m also the beneficiary of numerous notes, emails and communiqués from individuals in the “conscious community”, individuals who are extremely informed and well read, that are phonetically misspelled, grammatically incorrect, and incoherent.  On the rare occasion that I respond to those sorts of messages, informing the sender that I’m discouraged by their lack of basic English skills, I’m usually assaulted with the concept that achieving the white man’s education, knowing how to articulate oneself well in standard English, is to be unable to grasp my true African heritage.  It always seems that the party line is that TRUE Africans can only communicate in ebonics or some variation thereof.   I shouldn’t need a key and a translation guide have to decipher an email about the plight of my people. 

All three mindsets are dumb. 

To me, acting like you are white would be to be ignorant of other people’s history and culture.  Acting white would be diminishing other people’s pain, using your skin color for unearned privileges, trying to oppress people in order to make yourself feel superior.  Being barely literate and uneducated doesn’t make you more Black, it doesn’t make your Black experience more authentic.  The more we as a people ascribe to the notion that acting white is to be informed, intelligent, and articulate, the more we assert that being “real” or being Black is to shun education, the more we are playing into the hands of EXACTLY what white people expect us and want us to be . . . dumb niggers.  Educating oneself in an institution of higher learning does in fact make you smarter than stopping your education at the 12^th grade.  How much smarter is up to the individual but to assert anything different is absurd.  Mastering the English language doesn’t mean you can’t fight for the revolution, it simply means you can address multitudes of people in a way that everyone can understand. 

To act Black is to behave in a manner where we excel despite the circumstances.  Acting Black is to make a way out of no way.  White people can excel in life because they have inheritances, nepotism, institutionalized racism that allows them to get a foot in the door for no other reason, with no qualification other than their skin color.  Acting Black is excelling despite the fact that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far.  Acting Black is carrying yourself with dignity and grace when white people try to belittle or demean your by making racist comments and then excusing it by saying, “I’m just joking.”  Our Blackness is our strength, our ability to survive, adapt, and shine.  Shine on Black man and Black woman, shine on.