Seduction

All too often we use words without really knowing the definition of them.  Someone asked a question in my Facebook group that wanted people to share their definitions of what romance and seduction meant.  No one answered.  When I commented about that, what followed were responses that indicated that romance and seduction were foreign concepts to people.  It makes sense, we don’t teach, talk about, or provide a space for discussions of romance or seduction.  We either consume porn in private and in public decry that anything related to sex is taboo or forbidden.  We can’t even have healthy conversations about romance and seduction.  That’s tragic.  I asked a friend of mine what he would do to seduce me and he responded that he would take me to dinner at a jazz club.  That’s not seduction, that’s a date. 

According to the AfroerotiK Guide for Romantic Survival, romance can be defined as doing something special, going above and beyond to show your partner that you care for them, for their feelings, it’s taking the time to express your feelings for them in a way that would make them see how much you value them.  Several examples would be: writing a love poem for your partner and putting it on their car windshield while they are at work without them knowing it, planning a picnic with all their favorite foods and bringing it over on a rainy day, or making a planned public display or declaration of love that conveys that your feelings go beyond affection.  It doesn’t have to involve money.  It is not limited to one gender expressing romance to the other.  Romance is showing your partner that you have put effort into thinking about putting a smile on their face when you aren’t with them. 

Seduction is romance with the intent of stimulating the libido.  When I was in college, my boyfriend planned an erotic scavenger hunt for me.  He purchased wine glasses (which I still own) a night gown (that I kept until it fell apart), and some sexual aids for us to play with.  I spent the day finding all these items and getting more and more aroused as to what was going to happen when we got together.  Seduction is buying the candles, the massage oil, the erotic board game, the blindfold and the handcuff.  It’s not only buying dinner, it’s eating that dinner on the floor and feeding each other and licking and sucking each other’s fingers.  Seduction is running the bubble bath for two and massaging and caressing your partner to get their engine revved up.  Seduction is much more than just extended foreplay.  Seduction is making the bed with satin sheets before your partner comes home and having the Barry White queued up ready to go at the click of a button on the remote.  It’s telling your partner with your actions that you want and need to be intimate with them.  Intimate doesn’t mean it has to be soft and tender and gentle.  It simply means that you want to express your love in a very physical way. 

What romance/seduction is NOT.  It’s not lying to someone or pretending to be what they like in order to get them in bed, that’s manipulation.  It’s not getting along with someone more than others, that’s chemistry.  It’s not going out to the movies and holding hands, that’s affection.  It’s not saying, “I love you,” when you get off the phone or leave for work.  It’s not having extended foreplay or sex for a long time.  It’s not buying flowers on Valentine’s day because it’s expected or buying a card or gift after a fight to say that you’re sorry. 

The Jazz Alternative

More than thirty years ago, as a young 15 year old girl, I had the unique opportunity to work at a Black college radio station.  My mother, who was a graduate of Morgan State University, insisted that I had to get a job for the summer, that I couldn’t just sit at home and get into trouble or do nothing.  From the time I was a very little girl, I had volunteered at Morgan’s Radio Station for their fundraising drives, or more accurately, I’d sat silently watching and observing for many years while my mother answered phones, or, most often, I served cakes and desserts we had baked to help raise money for her beloved alma mater.  I loved interacting with the different on-air personalities, they were like celebrities to me, and they were always so gracious and welcoming to me over the years.  I eventually started answering phones myself during the fund drives and it dawned on me that working at W.E.A.A. for the summer would be an AWESOME idea.  Duh!  There would be boys!  College-aged boys.  What’s not to love about that idea? 

Well, jazz was the only problem with that equation.  It was 1980 and Rap was funky fresh, in the most literal sense of the word, and it was brand, spanking new.  It was just beginning to emerge on the scene and I was hooked.  The idea of having to listen to jazz all day was like a torture worse than hell to my little pubescent mind.  It was a torture I had to endure if I was going to work there, however, so I sucked it up.  I worked directly under Kweisi Mfume, former President of the NAACP.  He was the program director of the station.  He had political talk show in the evenings and I would be the first face many of the guests saw when they came in to the studio. (Yes, guests actually came into the studio to be interviewed, that’s how long ago it was.)  Back then, before the internet, Black radio was the only place to get the real news and opinions of that were relevant to Black people so his show was essential because it was left-leaning and unapologetically Black.  Al Stewart was the Station Manager.  I served as the assistant to his assistant for most of the day.  The DJs were free to choose whatever songs they wanted to play but I would type out the schedules for what public service announcements would be aired throughout the day.  The illustrious Larry Dean was the head of the news department and he was nothing less than an icon in journalism.  He took extraordinary measures to teach, coach, and guide me, to show me things that a kid my age really wouldn’t or shouldn’t have access to otherwise.  He treated me like an adult.  Lamont Brooks was a newscaster and a producer.  He let me record on-air PSAs where I repeated “WEAA, the Jazz Alternative,” the station’s tag line over and over again because he liked my voice.  He forced me get my license to be a radio broadcaster because he was convinced I had a talent for broadcasting . . . again, at 15 years old. 

But it was the on-air personalities that had the most influence over me that summer.  Isisara Bey was the morning personality.  She wore what were called dreadlocks at the time, my grandmother called them “worms in your head,” and they would flow all the way down her back.  Some days she would pile them on her head in intricate designs that seemed to defy gravity to my little mind.  All I’d ever been exposed to at that time in my life were press’n combs, relaxers, and wigs.  If a woman had natural hair back then, it was only because she was homeless or a drug addict and she couldn’t afford to get her hair done and she had better hide it under a headscarf lest she suffer the scorn and ridicule of every decent Black woman.  I’d never seen a woman in real life whom had chosen to wear her hair natural so Isisara seemed mysterious and magical to me; I was awed about how she wasn’t ashamed that her hair was -- nappy.  All my life I’d been told that nappy hair was an embarrassment and there she was, breathtakingly beautiful, and her hair wasn’t straight and blowing in wind like the shampoo commercials told me it was supposed to do.  She always smelled of different oils and fragrances that captivated me and she wore copper bracelets up and down her arm that made the most melodic, rhythmic sounds when she walked.  She would take off her shoes and light incense and she played this weird music intersperse with jazz called . . . reggae.  If you had told me at the time that it was from aliens, I might have believed you because I’d never heard anything like it in my life. 

The midday jock was Phillip Johnson.  He was, without question, the most beautiful man I’d ever laid eyes on in my life.  To say I had a crush on him is not even an understatement; it’s an egregious distortion of the very fabric of reality.  He didn’t just treat me like an adult, he treated me like a woman!  I would try to be the epitome of maturity when he was around him and I would listen to the music he played and try to learn the songs so I could impress him with my knowledge.  Of course, I’d grown up in a house where jazz was played all the time.  My grandparents played piano and were true jazz enthusiasts.  Phillip added a new element.  He wasn’t just playing jazz, he was playing innovative music, music beyond the big band of my grandparents and the contemporary jazz my mom played.  He exposed me to jazz that made me think, that made me feel something.  I didn’t want to like it but I did.  I loved it. I would rush home and listen to disco and rap and pop and New Edition (I was going to marry Ralph Tresvant) but I would actually look forward to going to work the next day for all the learning experiences but mostly to hear the new music. 

Record labels would send all sorts of music to the station and Phillip and I would go through the stacks of records together.  He would give me all the contemporary demos and I was the envy of all my friends because I had the extended remixes of all the popular songs.  (I had no idea what Grace Jones’ Pull Up to My Bumper was referring to at the time but I remember clearly that I had a 12” instrumental version of it long before it was on the radio and boy was I COOL.)   It wasn’t the music that he gave me that fascinated me the most, however.  I thought, if he gave it to me, he didn’t really value it, that it couldn’t be that good.  The music he kept is what intrigued me most.  They weren’t popular, well-known artists on major labels.  It was something in the records he kept that made them worthy of keeping.  Those records were, to me, truly, the jazz alternative.  

Unfortunately, I learned more about domestic abuse from the afternoon drive time DJ than I learned about jazz.  The young lady who would bring everyone home from their jobs was viscously battered by her boyfriend.  She would put on a “good face” for her listeners while hers was battered, swollen, and bruised in real life.  I heard very adult conversations, whispers behind her back about how she was a “victim” and that left a huge impression on me.  I knew that I never wanted to have a boyfriend who beat me up but I knew that what was worse was to have people scorn and ridicule you behind your back for not standing up for yourself.  I learned then that I would never be silent about the plight of women.  My mom would pick me up after work and we would go home and I would rush to listen to the rap songs and play them over and over on my cassette player to learn the words.  You see, back then, commercial radio stations didn’t play the same songs every hour.  You had to listen intently all day to hear the song you liked and have your tape player ready to record it so you could hear it until your mom drove you to the mall on a Saturday (NOT every Saturday) so you could buy the single for $.99. 

Clearly, that radio station had a huge impact on my life.  Today, I wear my hair natural.  Today, I’ve forsaken the music I once loved and grew up on, rap, because it’s become offensive to my every feminist sensibility.  Today, I can’t stand to listen to anything other jazz with some salsa, rare grooves and 70s music thrown in for good measure.  I live in a very remote area of Maryland but I make it a point, no matter how strapped I am in my budget to donate to my local NPR station because that is the tradition I was raised in.  As much as I despise, hate, abhor, and loathe Terry Gross on Fresh Air and her convoluted and absurd interviews, I respect that there must be alternative voices on the radio that speak to people beyond the corporate pabulum shoved down the throats of the masses so I give. 

I moved to Atlanta in 1997 and one of the first things I did was scan the dial to find the Black college radio station.  I was thrilled when I first heard Ken Batie’s Hot ICE in the Afternoons.  It spoke to me.  When I heard Jamal Ahmad’s The S.O.U.L. of Jazz, I knew I was listening to true jazzical genius.  As much as I love jazz, as much as jazz is a part of who I am, I’m always searching for new music to make me think and feel, just like when I was 15 years old, and Jamal has provided that and so much more.  He has not only entertained me, he has informed and educated me and provided me with exposure to artists I would have never heard otherwise.   I’ve traveled the world.  I’ve listened to jazz stations of every format from all over the country, the globe, and the World Wide Web.  There can be very little debate that Jamal Ahmad nurtured and developed the Atlanta music scene that has launched the careers of talented artists and in my humble but very informed opinion, there is no one better at what he does. 

WCLK is more than just Jamal Ahmad, I’m well aware.  I don’t want to diminish the contribution of the other on-air personalities in any way.  The collective of the entire station has been a bastion of sanity in a market that plays the same barely-literate, offensive, talentless five songs over and over and over again.  I was just in Atlanta for two weeks, returning back to Maryland the day before the station made their now infamous programming changes.  Driving around Atlanta for those two weeks, it felt like home to me in more ways than I can describe because I could hear the unique mix of jazz that formed my love for the art form.  I rolled down the windows of my truck and rejoiced in the music that made me the woman I am today, from morning until night, appreciating the artistry of all the DJs.  And what they do is truly the equivalent of sculpture or painting.  Music forms the soundtracks of our lives and they paint the pictures with sounds that create our memories. 

As I type this, Jamal Ahmad is playing some crappy, watered-down smooth jazz.  You see, WCLK decided that rather than have the original, cutting-edge, distinctive format that set them apart from all the rest, that they would conform and dictate what songs their DJs play and limit it to contemporary jazz.  Apparently, a study of 106 people, paid for by a donor to the tune of $60,000 revealed that WCLK needed to become more cookie cutter, more average, more bland, and average.  That’s how much it costs to buy the soul of the city.  Someone decided that being innovative and unique was a bad thing and that insipid was the way to go.  Now, no offense to Kenny G or anything, I’m sure he’s a very nice person, but his music gives me acid reflux.  All that saxaphonesque elevator music, redone songs from music that was mediocre in the first place, leaves a vile, bitter, unpalatable taste in my mouth.  What exactly is the point of smooth jazz?  As my grandmother used to say, “You gonna have to ask someone smarter than me cuz I don’t know.”  I’m profoundly ashamed that I never donated to WCLK while I lived in Atlanta because there is no question that it enriched my life.  I did attend Clark Atlanta for my graduate studies and I paid and exorbitant amount of money for an education that was would be generous to be described as substandard (that’s a whole ‘nutha story) so I do feel some, a teeny, tiny bit of comfort in that I indirectly contributed.  But I can’t, I vehemently refuse to contribute to an institution that makes the conscious decision to pander to the lowest common denominator and relinquish what made them exceptional in an effort to make a buck. 

I own my own company.  I create erotica for a living in fact.  I write erotica that shows the complexity and sensuality of Black people in a way that is not at all stereotypical, ghetto, or degrading.  I don’t use the N word in my erotica ever.  I’ve never once used the word bitch, freak, or ho to describe a Black woman in my erotica.  I’ve never written about adultery or women selling their bodies.  I’ve never made a story that centered on the size of a Black man’s penis or made reference to a Black woman being a nympho or even had my characters engaged in casual sex.  I don’t write soft-core, romantic erotica, I write explicit, unapologetically Black, political, socially relevant, conscious erotica.  I write the erotic equivalent of The S.O.U.L of Jazz.  I struggle to make a living because I write erotic that is outside the norm.  I could have long ago decided that I was going to write what sells, write about Summer, the beautiful, biracial Puerto Rican and Black light skinned super-model who lives in a penthouse who is struggling to get the attention of Derrick, the former football player/rapper turned investment banker who continues to have an affair with NiNi, his baby mama from back in the day . . . Oh God!  I can’t even go on, it’s the same story as every Black erotic tale on the shelves.  Hell, it’s every reality TV show on today, it’s every Black movie, it’s the foundation for every rap video.  When is enough, enough?    

I have scores of loyal, core followers and fans.  They love and appreciate my work, they support me and respect that I’m trying to give them a voice that no one else is doing.  Do they financially support me?  A few do.  Some can’t.  Most don’t.  My point is this.  I’m not going to change my brand, I’m not going to walk away from what I know is healthy and beautiful and right just to pander to the mediocre and crappy to make a buck.  The key to my success is in getting my message to the masses, lifting their standards for what constitutes quality erotica, NOT writing the same boring, offensive, bland erotica.  I’m not going to write the equivalent of smooth jazz erotica just because that’s what sells.  There is value in having standards that make you excellent.  There is no amount of money in the world, there is no dollar amount that would make me sell out just to be average. 

The key to WCLK’s future success is in better marketing, better PR, better outreach into the community.  They need to think of new, innovative ways to raise money.  They have destroyed the thing that made them stand out, that made them exceptional.  I hope it’s not too late for them.  I hope they see the error of their ways and correct it.  I need for them to go back the format that kept the loyal listeners tuned in.  It must be a terribly scary concept for the management to admit that they’ve made a mistake, to acknowledge that they had the perfect gourmet recipe and they sold it for the fast food option.  Maybe they need to start being forward thinking and come up with new ways to get their die-hard listeners to contribute more, to get more exposure.  Maybe I need to get in the kitchen and start baking cakes to sell like I did when I was a kid.  Whatever the solution, I’m 100% positive that it’s not to play ghastly versions of R&B re-done with a clarinet. 

WEAA shaped me.  It was the fact that they weren’t commercial, they didn’t play the same songs, they didn’t conform to mediocrity, which is precisely one of the reasons I am who I am today.  What WCLK has done has taken a mentor, a teacher, sage, and guide away from those who might be shaped and molded to greatness.  They have destroyed the last opportunity for children to learn about the jazz greats and to hear innovative, experimental music, to experience the world beyond the monotonous, life-draining music that’s called rap today.  We have to be a people who demand better for ourselves, not lower the bar.  The S.O.U.L. of our people resides in our ability to excel, not just exist. 

SIGN THE PETITION

Copyright 2013 Scottie Lowe All Rights Reserved

Erotic provocateur, humanist, relentless champion for the oppressed, and facilitator for social change, Scottie Lowe is the creative genius and driving force behind AfroerotiK.  Intended to be part academic, part educational, and part sensual, she, yes SHE gave birth to the website and the company to provide people of African descent a place to escape the narrow-mined, stereotypical, limiting and oft-times degrading beliefs that abound about Black sexuality.  No, not all Black men are driven by lust for white flesh.  No, not all Black women are promiscuous welfare queens willing to do sexual favors for money.  And no, not all gay Black men are feminine, down low, or HIV positive.  Scottie is putting everything on the table to discuss, debate, and dismantle stereotypes in a healthy exchange of ideas.  She hopes to provide a more holistic, informed, and enlightened discussion of Black sexuality so that people of color have alternatives to the one-dimensional caricatures the media force-feeds us and she dreams of helping couples become more open, honest, and adventurous in their relationships. 

Sankofa

I asked myself a question one day, a question I was not prepared to get the answer for.  It opened a door for me that I wish I could shut.  Life was much simpler when I did not have to re-examine everything that I knew as truth.  One day, when I was in deep meditation, the spirit of a strong willed African woman came to me and lifted my veil of illusion and confusion.  Let me recount for you the true story she revealed to me. 

One beautiful, glorious early morning, this young woman rose to greet the sun and face another day in harmony with the earth.  She was greeted by the gunfire and weapons of white men that raided and attacked her village.  She fought but she was beaten and subdued.  She saw the bodies of her family and community, massacred around her as the stench of death and blood hung heavy in the air.  She was dragged away, kicking and screaming as she saw the crying and anguished faces of the young and the old that were left to die like useless livestock. 

For months, she walked alongside the horseback prone pale men that raped her and beat her at will.  Her feet were bloody and raw, she was lonely and hungry and she ached for rest but they did not and would not let up.  She was chained to the bodies of men and women that were dead, sick, fatigued and dying, yet she had no choice but to carry on under the whip of the slave traders.  She learned quickly to stifle her cries of pain and anguish because they seemed to bring the sting of the whip that much more.  It was clear her pain served to amuse her captors so she resigned within her soul to not give them that pleasure.

They waved strange items in her face, two wooden sticks tethered together and a coded document of some sort that was bound by a dark piece of cow hide with golden symbols on the front.  They would yell and scream at her in a strange tongue and seemed to take much pleasure in kicking her in her private parts or even her head while screaming this strange word over and over again.  They were brutal in their torture, pushing her body past the human limits for pain.  The only way she survived the excruciating pain was to call upon her God to save her.  She prayed and chanted, she did rituals in the dark of night when her captors were fast asleep, all to help her survive this unknown journey into darkness. 

Arriving at what she thought was to be her final destination on earth; she was ushered beneath the ground to a hole with a stench so awful she could not hold anything on her stomach for days on end.  She was separated from the people in her village, most of whom hadn’t even survived the journey to the coast, and she was housed in a room made of stone with more rats and insects than humans.  The other women there ministered to her, even though they were from different tribes and did not speak the same language; they bonded with her sharing the same evil fate.  They anointed her body with oils and herbs they were able to procure by having sex with the guards of the dark place.  She longed for a medicine woman to come to help heal the weeping and oozing sores on her body and to heal her ripped flesh of her vagina, torn savagely as the men inserted any many of things into her body.  Her period had stopped on the journey and she was sure she was no longer a woman but an empty shell to be beaten and left to die.  She was sure she was going to be a sacrifice to the heavens for a crime she had not committed.

For months she lay in the urine, feces and blood of the stone rooms while she called upon the holy names of Obatala, BabaluAye, and Orunmila to protect her, to deliver her from this nightmare.  She prayed fervently, pleading with them to deliver her prayers to Olodumare to spare her life so that she might live to survive to the glory of the Universal Father/Mother, the Creator, The One Most High.  She sent up prayers constantly because that’s all she could do.  Her body was so severely malnourished she could scarcely put up a fight when the men came to defile her with their sick, twisted and perverted pleasures.  Branded with the searing hot iron at the hands of the captor men, she was called a name that was not a name her had tribe had ever used.  She learned quickly her new name was to be Nigger, but it seemed odd to her that all of her brothers and sisters in captivity had the same name as well. 

Just when she thought she could go on no longer, she saw the light of day only to find that her fate was worse.  She was boarded on a ship, packed tightly one body on top of another, scarcely enough room to breathe.  Some days, the only water she would get to drink was the rancid piss of the people that were chained to the deck above that would drip through the rotted planks of the ship’s hold.  She clung to life in whatever way she could, so she could die of her own choosing, not at the hands of the evil men.  Her plan was to jump overboard to end her own life and not have it be taken from her by her vile captors.  That was not to be the case; she survived, clinging to life with the tender caresses of the others who had not gone insane from the pain, dehydration, disease and despair. 

For months, she had no way to comprehend time or space.  They landed in a place where she was poked, prodded and inspected like cattle only to be put on another ship to land at another strange destination.  Once again, she was paraded around, inspected by the stringy-haired men, and she was put in the back of a wagon with other Black people and taken to a farm with an enormous cottage, the likes of which she had never seen before.  The king was a pinkish man who would come to her at night and use her in ways a man was never supposed to use a woman.  During the day, she was forced to work the land.  Her tears fertilized the crops as she worked in silence alongside the people that spoke the same language as the brutal pale people. 

Many times, she would sneak off into the woods at night and dance and sing and escape in her mind to her home where she could be carefree and happy again.  She would offer her prayers up to the orisha, pouring out libations on this unholy ground, and begging them to wake her up from this horrible nightmare.  She prepared a secret alter to present gifts to the heavens and; it was her place of solace and refuge and it was her reminder of her peaceful but distant home.  She longed to wear colors again, she needed to eat food that gave life, not the garbage the captors threw away, longed to dance and sing, and to feel joy again.  She longed for the sensual touch of a man, not the brutal attacks she endured that made her die a little inside.  She was slowly losing the sensation of dignity and self-respect, traits her fellow slaves never knew.

One day, in the solitude of the woods, she anointed herself a high priestess. She had secretly fasted and prayed for one full rotation of the moon and gathered the herbs she needed to burn to put herself into a trance to pass through the spiritual portal to the heavens.  With only the stars in the sky as her illumination, she uttered the holy words she had heard the spiritual elders say back home along with a prayer that the spirits would forgive any misspoken words in her solitary and extreme conditions.  She knew that if she were caught, she could be killed instantly; the whites in charge were insistent that every African denounce all that was holy and good from their homeland.  She couldn’t share her secret place with anyone, the blacks that were born in captivity in this new world knew nothing of the spiritual beliefs that kept their parents and grandparents alive on the bowels of those horrible ships, they ridiculed her for her language, stories, songs, and traditions, telling her that only the God of the evil white man was good. She wept for their souls; for they had never known what it was like to truly be free.  All of their beliefs and thoughts were dictated by their owners and they would never know truth or independence all the days of their lives.

Her secret place was not to be a secret for very long because one of the guards followed her one evening, found her alter, and flew into a rage.  He slapped her body to the ground and dragged her to the front of the big house.  He tore her meager garments from her body and began to lash her back with a whip.  The leather tore at her flesh as she screamed out in anguish.  The blood ran from the open wounds as she lay defenseless on the ground.   He was screaming at her to accept Jesus as her personal lord and savior.  She would never accept the God of these evil men and she prepared herself for death as she felt the flesh ripped from her body with each lash. Fatigued and frustrated from administering such a relentless beating, the man poured salt into her open wounds and forbade anyone to touch her.  He admonished everyone that if they didn’t accept Jesus, that they would get the same treatment or worse.  For hours she lay on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness, floating between life and death, visions of her homeland calling out to her.

That night, the others came to collect what they were sure was her lifeless body.  How had she survived such a brutal beating?  The word that clung to her lips was faint yet determined, “Yemaya, Yemaya.”  The fact that she went on to recover physically was nothing less than a miracle.

The years passed, she learned the language of the people, she gave birth many times, her children not hers to raise; they were sold off to other slave owners, never to be seen again.  She wanted desperately for her children to know their real names, to understand that where they came from was a much better place, to pass on the history, culture, language and traditions of the place that she knew to be home, the people she loved and missed.  She didn’t want them raised to be niggers, dead to the ways of life and conditioned to believe in their inferiority.

Her last child was the child of the slave master, and she was allowed to keep him.  She would sneak him off into the night as a young boy and teach him the traditions of her homeland.  He learned quickly and showed great promise and enthusiasm.  The slave master heard rumors that she was teaching her son the ways of Africa in secret and threatened her that if she didn’t stop her teachings immediately, if she didn’t teach her son to worship Jesus and denounce her African beliefs, she was going to witness her son being lashed until death in front of all that could see. The pain she felt inside was the greatest pain she had endured since her nightmare had begun.  She knew that she could not bare the thought of seeing any harm coming to her child but she also believed that his only chance for freedom was in the saving grace of Olodumare to deliver him from the false perceptions that surrounded them. 

She watched her son grow to manhood; he denounced his mother and her African ways and wore a cross around his neck exactly like the one that she had seen so many years ago around the neck of the men that first raped her.  He called upon the name of Jesus for his salvation and he refused to study anything but the leather bound book that justified the reason for the enslavement of his people.  He looked down on her in disgust for her flawless skin the color of rare ebony.  He cringed in horror at the sight of his mother’s natural hair, completely convinced that the hair of white women was somehow more beautiful because he believed that white people were better than blacks.  He could not comprehend that the wooly hair, thick lips, wide nose and high cheekbones of his mother were in any way beautiful for he had been told all his life that only white women were beautiful.  He did whatever he could to separate himself from being a nigger because no one in their right mind would want to be that.

I wish that was the end of my story.  I wish that had only happened in isolation and this was a fictional but tragic story.  Sadly, it rings true for every African American who has ancestry in slavery.  The details might be slightly different but the experience of capture, transportation, spiritual annihilation, and mental enslavement are the same.  There is a lineage of survival and courage in our veins that are at unrest because we, the children of the great ones, are practicing the religion of the people that made them endure the most horrific torture possible.  They cry out to us to look back, to feel their presence, to understand that the lies of the slave master were only to justify his evil actions and the beliefs that we were inferior.  Africans were not heathens, Christianity was not a gift to Blacks, we were not rescued from a savage place we were kidnapped and stolen to live life lower than an animal.

Today, the beliefs of the slaves are still so much a part of our psyche, that most Black people reading this will react violently at the thought of threatening their religion and reality.  They will do anything to hold onto the beliefs of the whip that told us that Africans were saved by slavery.  They will justify the lessons taught by white people and they will insist that other Africans sold their ancestors into slavery and that it wasn’t white’s fault, completely absolving whites from any guilt in their participation in the slave trade.  They will say, “God had a plan and that was to bring Christianity to us through slavery,” justifying the torture and abuse of our African ancestors that survived so that their legacy might live on in honor and in glory, not in captivity. I’m sure they could find no equal justification if even one white person were to endure that same treatment today.  They would never find the “silver lining” in the brutal enslavement of white people yet the very blood that runs through their veins is from those that endured more than their minds will even try to grasp.  They will say, “I’m not a victim,” incorrectly assuming that to be a victim means one chooses to be weak.  They will not understand that if they do not see the horror and errors of our collective past, they are victims of brainwashing and lies. 

Perhaps there is one however that will read these words over and over again,  looking for their own answers, putting together the pieces of a long forgotten puzzle.   Perhaps there is one who will go into meditation and prayer and call out to the one that refused to let go of their beliefs during captivity and died knowing that they were truly free.  Perhaps there is one that will ask the questions that reveal the ultimate truth.

The spirit that called out to me lives in these words.  Her blood was not spilled in vain because it sustains me and gives me life so that I might share her story with those willing to hear.  I must be her vessel and her voice.

Copyright 2005 Scottie Lowe