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 AM Worthy

Deeply ingrained in the psyche of slaves was the belief, the unshakeable BELIEF that Black people were meant to suffer.  They grew to believe, shackled under the oppressive physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual chains of slavery, that their life was intended to be painful, that they had to sacrifice, that there were destined to accept second, third, and fourth best.  Slaves were beaten, raped, held captive, tortured, and worked like animals and told that their rewards would only come when they accepted white Jesus and got to heaven.  And with no hope for wealth and affluence, with no hope of dignity or justice, they held on to the notion that their pain would end when they were washed by the blood of their lily-white savior once they got to the pearly gates. 

White people, not only just slave owners but all white people, had no such debilitating belief beat into them.  They believed, just as they do now, that the world is their oyster, that they can do and say anything without repercussions.  They have never known the concept of pain and suffering being intrinsic to their identity.  Sure, they have known pain, but it’s not tied to their identity, it’s not because of their whiteness.  They believe that they are the best, that they deserve the best, that they don’t have to do a damn thing to deserve the best, that they are entitled to their hearts’ desires simply ‘cuz. 

Black people today, in 2015, still largely believe that we must suffer, that pain is part and parcel of our identity.  The messages passed down, the lessons taught to us from our parents and grandparents who brutally beat us, who silenced us, who stifled our creativity, who tried their best to protect us from disappointment and injustice, is that we have to be long-suffering, that we have to settle, that we are inherently undeserving of fairness, wealth, respect, and just plain ole happiness because of our skin color.  We are conditioned to believe that we have to accept second best, that we must swallow our anger, we must not offend the white man, that we aren’t worthy of luxury or wealth, joy; we overwhelmingly belief that we are undeserving of something as basic as love. 

Some of us in the last few decades have broken the chains, we have changed our beliefs and we are beginning to believe, deep down in our souls, that we are deserving of wealth and abundance, that we are not inherently unworthy creatures like our forefathers and mothers were forced to believe.  Regrettably, we have also acquired a gross materialism and capitalistic narcissism, a replication of the pathologies of the greed and the obliviousness of white people who think the universe owes them, that they are deserving for no other reason than having breath in their lungs.  I’m working diligently on changing my own core beliefs, I’m determined to see myself as worthy of the best that life has to offer.  The psychological chains of slavery are still not broken, they are heavy and burdensome and suffocating.  Most of us still are imprisoned by the chains that we are only as good as the crumbs that have been thrown to us, that we will only know peace and joy when we die.  WE MUST CHANGE OUR CORE BELIEFS.  We must FEEL worthy deep down in our hearts and souls.  We must start to believe that we are inherently deserving of wonderful things, of success and peace and abundant and over-flowing blessings. 

And so it is. 

Dear Mr. White Police Officer,

I’m really going to need you to stop murdering unarmed Black men in the streets.  Come on, let’s be honest with each other, between you and I, you know this is getting out of control, right?  I get it, I really do.  You don’t see Black people as humans.  You hate us for our music, our slang, and the way we wear our clothes.  I understand, I really do.  You think we are inherently criminal, loud, lazy and that we are the reason that everything is wrong with this country of yours.  I would say country of ours, both yours and mine considering I was born here, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents and my great-great grandparents were born here as well.   They were slaves but technically that made them citizens, or 3/5ths of one at least.   My lineage in this country is long and I have just as much right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as you do.  But, let’s be honest it’s not my country at all.  It’s your world, you run it, and you have decided that people who look like me are underserving of sharing the air that you breathe. 

You might not think so but I understand you very well.  You watch Fox News every night, you obsess over hating Obama, you hate Mexicans for taking American jobs and speaking that damn Spic language, you hate Muslims because they are all terrorist towel heads, you dislike Asians, well, just because they are aren’t white.  But it’s those niggers you hate the most, isn’t it?  You hate us because you believe we are inherently criminal, inherently stupid, inherently deserving of being slaughtered like pigs, don’t you?  You despise us because our hair is wooly and disgusting to you.  Our lips and noses are repulsive to you, hideous.  And if we’re being honest with each other, and we can be, you hate Black men for having bigger dicks because it’s not fair that your little penis is so small but you know in your heart that you are supposed to be superior.  In all fairness, we can’t do anything about the proportions of our features, we are not responsible for that, we have no control over our genetics.  Even though so many of us covet your stringy, limp hair, your thin lips, and your pale, pasty skin, altering our aesthetics to conform to your narrow standards of beauty, you don’t really hate EVERYTHING about Black people, do you?  Shhhhh, I know your secret.  I know that at home, in private, you secretly lust after that big, hard, strong, thick, BLACK cock.  You want your wife to be fucked by it, you want to sexually submissive to it.  You want to worship it like it’s your God and you lust after it to the point of obsession.  When you put on that uniform, however, when you put on that badge and that gun and you’re around your good ole boys, you can’t let anyone know your secrets so you tell those nigger jokes, you tase us for not wearing a seat belt or waiting for our children, you use illegal choke holds to restrain us , choking the life out of us, and you shoot us over and over and over again to prove to yourself and the world that you really are superior, that we are nothing more than scum that needs to be disposed of like trash. 

But, if we are being completely fair, just between you and I, it’s really your fault that Blacks are in the socio-economic position we are in and the criminal behaviors that result from being denied equality for so long.  Well, maybe not you personally but white people as a whole.  It was the overwhelming and offensively arrogant ego of white people who decided that strong, beautiful, resilient bodies of Africans were unworthy of freedom; it was whites who decided that people of African descent had to labor like beasts, with no education, no income, no right to their heritage, culture, or history, to build a country for which they got no credit.   You know that you and your friends do more drugs and alcohol than Black people could ever dream of doing.  You know that you are more sexually deviant than Black people ever could hope to be.  Deep down inside you know that it’s not Blacks who are inherently inferior at all, don’t you?  Black people aren’t inherently criminal or lazy or stupid.  We really aren’t.  If we are less advantaged than whites, it’s because you wanted us to be.  You stop us from getting jobs that could provide for our families, you don’t want us to be educated so that we could be equal to you, you put us in prison for things you turn a blind eye to when your neighbor does it.  You want us to be relegated to a life of despair and poverty with no hope and now you are killing us because we are victims of a system that archetypal “you” put in place centuries ago.  As much as you don’t want to admit it, as much as you are in denial that there are long-term, tangible, and compound consequences to the legacy that is slavery, you are murdering us for something that is not of our own doing, not our fault at all.  That’s . . . not very fair. 

So, Mr. white police officer, I’m going to beg you to not massacre us like animals in the streets so you can hide your conflicted and tormented beliefs.  I’m going to beg you not to leave our bodies laying in the streets for hours.  I’m pleading with the part of you that is just and fair and right to not fill our beautiful brown bodies with lead so that you might not ever have to reconcile your very racist beliefs and your conflicted sexual desires.  We do not deserve to be murdered for circumstances that we did not create, for the inner demons you are unwilling to fight. 

Sincerely,

The mother of a movement to educate and enlighten,  Scottie Lowe.