AfroerotiK

Erotic provocateur, racially-influenced humanist, relentless champion for the oppressed, and facilitator for social change, Scottie Lowe is the brain child, creative genius and the blood, sweat, and tears behind AfroerotiK. Intended to be part academic, part educational, and part sensual, she, yes SHE gave birth to the website to provide people of African descent a place to escape the narrow-mined, stereotypical, limiting and oft-times degrading beliefs that abound about our sexuality. No, not all Black men are driven by lust by white flesh or to create babies and walk away. No, not all Black women are promiscuous welfare queens. And as hard as it may be to believe, 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 and dreams of helping couples be more open, honest, and adventurous in their relationships.

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

The Myth of the Magical, All-Powerful White Man



Or Debunking the Fallacy of White Supremacy

I’ve come to understand that there are certain Black people who believe that white men have super powers, supposedly genetically-inherited, superior intellectual mind-control techniques that they use to oppress people of color around the globe.  If I understand their assertions correctly, they believe that white men are capable of controlling the minds of brown people universally and conversely no one is able to get into their minds, no one is able to control them because everyone else is under their spell, hypnotized by their . . . whiteness I guess.  Their whiteness is theoretically impenetrable and renders mere people of color helpless to combat their evil machinations.  It seems that this small faction of Black people believe that white men possess genetic predisposition to rule the world and, oddly enough and quite contradictorily, they believe that it is the secret mission of white men to become Black, or at least commandeer Blackness because they feel jealous of it.  I’m led to believe that they accomplish their mission with their superior intellect, secret societies, and agendas passed down from white brethren to white brethren to intricately know the minds of Black folks and to beat us at our own game.  I’m here to say that NOTHING could be further from the truth. 

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Cress_Welsing is the preeminent black scholar of these types of assertions.  If she is not the originator of them, she certainly is the benchmark Black people use to quote and or paraphrase their “white supermen” theories.  I think it should also be noted here that the vast and overwhelming majority of Black people believe completely differently than the above-mentioned theories.  Sadly, most Black people believe in the fallacy of white supremacy but they don’t have a clue that they do.  Most Black people say color doesn’t matter and sign on hook, line, and sinker for any cliché that white people cast at them.  Most Black people wouldn’t know how to question the status quo if you paid them.  That’s not because we are inherently stupid, it’s a byproduct of our enslavement where we were taught not to question white people or anything they tell us.  People of color have to believe in the fallacy of white supremacy, lest you get those pesky minorities who try to buck the system and talk about racism and the inherent privileges white people have simply by virtue of their skin color.

First, let’s break it down and establish some truths in these fallacious white supremacist concepts.  There is UNQUESTIONABLY a fallacy of white supremacy that dictates, rules, and poisons the entire world.  It seems that the smallest population of people have been able to order, control, dominate, oppress, and manipulate the earth’s resources so that they control and “own” damn near everything.  I say the fallacy of white supremacy implicitly because it is nothing more than illusion.  It’s a fallacy that they are superior, it’s not a fallacy that they have been able to take their inflated belief in self and transform that into global domination.  Does average white Joe or Sally believe that they are better than people of color?  Yes, that’s how the game is perpetuated.  Average white Joe or Sally has to believe that history started with their arrival on the planet, that white people are the originators of the arts and sciences.  They have to believe that whites made every technological advancement.  If they don’t sign on for the belief that whites were smarter, stronger, more capable, more civilized, more refined, more god-like than any other people, then the whole house of cards starts to fall.  Average Joe and Sally White has to believe that there is something inherent about them that makes them better, that makes them more deserving of peace, justice, and liberty than anyone else on the planet.  God is a white man thus white men have to be given more insight, more leadership ability, more spiritual stuff, right?  The air white people breathe has to be more sacred, the land they live on has to be more consecrated, more blessed, more protected than anyone else’s land.  Greece has to be the birthplace of the humanities, Columbus has to be the greatest explorer, Shakespeare has to be the best author, Beethoven the best composer, Rocky has to be the best fighter, Jesus has to have blue eyes and blonde hair, and white people have to believe that to be true from the time they are born in order for the fallacy of white supremacy to thrive.  White has to be right or the entire fallacy of white supremacy crumbles like a crunchy taco shell on Cinco de Mayo at an all you can eat Mexican buffet.    

Ever watch the news right after some white person has gone on a killing spree and killed everyone they could?  The neighbors all say the same thing.  “Oh, he was so nice.  You just don’t think something like that can happen in this neighborhood.”  That, dear ladies and gentlemen, is the fallacy of white supremacy at work.  It is the belief that crime only happens in Black/Latino neighborhoods.  It’s the belief that Psycho Joe, as everyone in the neighborhood calls him, is a good ole boy regardless of the fact that he kills the neighborhood cats and drinks their blood because he has white blood.  You see, whiteness equals good in this society.  It’s what children are taught in school, it’s what’s reflected in the media, it’s the thread that’s woven into the very fabric of how the perceptions of how the world is viewed.    White men who get to decide what is and what isn’t racist comes purely from the fallacy of white supremacy.  It’s the notion that they don’t have to consider anyone else’s experience or perspective because what they see, and think, and believe has to be right. 

Are there secret societies that have been formed to keep people of color oppressed?  Yes.  Do those men have super abilities, do they have access to mind control techniques that keep people of color hypnotized in order to exact their plans of global domination?  Not exactly.  What those secret societies posses are members who are egotistical and greedy and intent on keeping their illegitimate power.  Their ego is born from this belief that white men are special, that they have rights and privileges no one else is deserving of.  Their ego is what drives them to steal, rape, kill, and oppress.  Their ego makes them narcissistic bastards who sit around and try to figure out ways to control the money and power so that it doesn’t get into the hands of brown, yellow, or (what’s left of) red people.  It is nothing more than their ego that makes white men think that they have more inherent value than anyone else that has created this false sense of superiority.  Their ego is greater than most white men but it’s certainly not genetic and it’s not indication that they want to be Black or have a need to oppress people because they feel insecure because they lack melanin. 

From where did this warped sense of self originate?  How did white people first come to believe that they had dominion over the colored people of the planet?  I have no earthly idea. I can’t even begin to speculate.  I do know that it has infected every country, every place white people have been for thousands of years.  What I can do, however, is tell you how the fallacy of white supremacy has been able to flourish and metastasize in this country over the last 400 years.  There’s no magic to it, there’s no genetics involved, there’s no secret societal agenda, it’s pure psychology.  Understanding the mind and how it works holds the key to understanding how and why white people in this country have been able to dictate and dominate the minds of people of color for over four centuries. 

Europeans saw the beautiful brown bodies of the indigenous people of the land that is now known as Africa and believed that they were inferior savages.  They assumed they themselves were inherently superior and that is was their right to capture, kill, kidnap, enslave, and own those people.  That belief, what they thought was truth and knowledge and undisputable fact, is what created the system of racial slavery in the US that has been unequaled in the world before or since.  They believed that their skin was better, their hair was better, their features were more attractive; they believed that their language, arts, customs, religion, and practices had more validity than anything Africans could contribute.  They had a deep-seated need to control and subjugate and veritably crush the wills of those people of color. 

Africans who were enslaved, those who survived the middle passage were and transportation to the United States were emotionally, psychologically, spiritually healthy people.  They were capable of making choices and decisions on their own, forming their own opinions, knowing what it was to be a human being outside of their enslavement.  Slaves born in this country, those who never knew freedom, were never privileged enough to know anything other than what the system of slavery taught them.  Slaves born into they system believed from birth that whites were superior, that Blacks were inferior, and that anything and everything that was good was white.  Every black child born into slavery learned the same lessons, that white was right and that black was equivalent to evil. 

Conversely, every white child born in this country was the beneficiary of being born in a system that told them that every thing about their life, their world, their entire existence that they were superior to anyone with color.  (Rather, anything, because they didn’t see slaves as humans)   The prevalence of racism and the systems, laws, and beliefs enacted during slavery set the stage for every white child to not only believe they were superior but it was validated (at least in their minds) because anything and everything of accomplishment was achieved by white people. 

Fast forward and the beliefs held by the children of slave owners and the children of white people in general, whether they owned slaves or not, have been passed down from generation to generation.  The key instruments in building a child’s self esteem are to shower them with praise and reinforce to them that they have an inherent worth.  Having books, and TV shows and movies that show children people that look like them builds a sense of self.  Reading children stories where all the heroes are white perpetuates the fallacy of white supremacy.  Teaching children that God in heaven looks like them validates that white is the baseline, the standard by which everything else has to be measured.  White children, never having read a book about Black people, never having heard a story of African accomplishment, never conceiving that anyone other than white people contributed anything to society will grow up with an inherited and false sense of superiority.  White children never have to wait until the one night of the week when the “white shows” are on, they never have to wait for the white movie to come out.  They have access to centuries of images of themselves that show them in a positive and healthy light.  So while Blacks have inherited and passed down a slave mentality (even though we don’t acknowledge or admit it) whites have passed down a slave master mentality. 

Slave master mentality is the mindset of white people who have never once had to question that people like them have been the masters of finance, industry, medicine and the arts.  Slave master mentality is the mindset of people who have never once in their lives felt that their skin color was a liability, something that they had to denounce in order to be accepted.  Slave master mentality is the belief systems passed down from generation to generation that allows white people to accept that the final authority, the last word, the law from on high is going to come from a person who looks like them.  It’s that diseased sense of self, that inflated super ego that has created Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush.   It’s what lead Pat Buchanan to say, and moreover BELIEVE, that this country was built by white men. It’s that isolation from a world where people of color are equal, that inocular vision which creates the ego of white people who think that it’s okay to be racist, that they can say whatever they want, to whomever they want, without repercussion, without censure because they have a birthright to do so.  The fallacy of white supremacy is perpetuated on the beliefs of white men who think that they have more right to money, power, and control than anyone else. 

While I recognize and acknowledge that the pervasive and overwhelming mindset of white people in this society, EVEN those who claim to not have a racist bone in their body, is based on the fallacy of white supremacy, it is just that . . . a fallacy.  White people are not truly superior, they have no super ability to understand the minds of people of color and mastermind techniques to keep us oppressed.  What keeps us oppressed is our inability to understand and comprehend our history, our inability to be introspective and examine our dysfunctions and their origins, and our fear of admitting that we might be flawed (through no fault of our own mind you).  It is far easier for us to worship a blonde haired, blue eyed Jesus than to change the belief that we’ve learned from childhood, passed down to us from our parents, and their parents and their parents before them that black is ugly and bad.  What keeps them in power is their belief that they are superior.  They believe it so they behave in ways that reflect their beliefs.  They start wars, they dictate and manipulate, they work diligently to keep people of color from taking their power or from becoming equal because what’s been taught to them by their parents, what their great grandparents taught their grandparents is that white people have more value.  Even if the message isn’t overt, even if the message doesn’t come from behind the percale softness of a poly-cotton white sheet, the result is the same.  Any white child born in this society has been the beneficiary of an educational, medical, judicial, legal, and social system that has placed whiteness on a pedestal, as an entity deserving of worship and praise.  When white people try to silence any discussion of racism, it’s because they believe that they have a right to say what’s valid, what’s true, what’s right in the world, that no other experience other than their own has weight.   They see the world through white colored glasses.  In that world, everything comes back to the fact that they have been validated, reinforced, and reminded every single solitary day of their lives that white people are great.  They’ve never once had to live in a time or place where white people are not seen as the origin of everything good in the world.

So in order for white people, the few elites who do have global power and control, to remain in power, for them to maintain the status quo, people of color have to be complicit in their agenda.  There has to be a population of Black people who believe that there are white men who possess super-human, secret Echelon infrastructure powers to control and dominate people of color.  Once we accept that the fallacy of white supremacy is based on nothing more than the narcissistic, self-centered and childlike behaviors of men with inflated egos who have the same flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities as everyone else, then and only then can we start restructuring a world where everyone is equal.  Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney can no longer be secret society masterminds but they are little boys who were told over and over that the Lone Ranger was good and that the injuns were bad.  They cease to be keepers of keys to sacred texts that were created in ancient times to mesmerize the people of color around the globe to goose step to their tune of supremacy.  It is in truth and understanding that we see them as individuals who were told that God was a white man and that they were literally created in his image and likeness.  Left unchecked, the ego can be a dangerous tool.  Understanding that illusion is the key to our liberation.  The fallacy of white supremacy can be dismantled and destroyed with knowledge of self, re-writing our stories to include people of color, and dismantling the notion that white men are somehow in possession of tools that will allow them to control us.  Every human being has the ability within them to crush the inflated ego of self and shine the light of truth, justice, and peace on the shadows of injustice that have plagued the world. 

Copyright 2009 Scottie Lowe of AfroerotiK

Monday, April 08, 2013

The Black Woman’s Manifesto for the New Millennium

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The Black Man’s Manifesto for the New Millennium





Brought to you by AfroerotiK

I AM a Strong Black man and as such  . . .

  • I will carry myself with the grace, dignity and character of a king at all times.

  • I will speak to women as human beings, not as potential sex partners, not as someone with less value than myself, not someone I must dominate in order to validate my manhood. 

  • I will not plan out how I can get a woman into bed before I even introduce myself. 

  • I will not judge a woman’s beauty, worth or value by the length of her hair, the length of her fingernails, the roundness of her behind or the size of her feet, and most importantly, the color of her skin, just as I would not want to be judged by the length of my penis, the size of my wallet, the car I drive, or the amount of money I make.   

  • I will make every effort to make sure women know that they are safe when they are in my presence.  I will not touch, grope, or physically intimidate them and I will not make unwanted sexual advances towards them.

  • I will NOT strike, restrain, or threaten a woman. 

  • I will accept that if a woman says no, she means she’s not interested in me sexually and that is her right.  I will never force a woman to have sex with me.  

  • I will ask my women friends, sisters and acquaintances what makes them feel undervalued, unappreciated and objectified and I will listen closely and make efforts to correct those things that I do wrong.

  • When a woman tells me something is insensitive, demeaning, or offensive, I will not dismiss it immediately as male bashing.  I will take her critique just as I would expect someone to consider mine. 

  • I will find something other than a woman’s looks to compliment her about.  I will make note of her intellect, her personality, her ideas, her imagination, and her accomplishments.

  • I will acknowledge that my mother, sister, and daughters are black women, deserving of respect, and I will work to treat ALL Black women as I would have other men treat the women in my life. 

  • I will accept responsibility for my wrongdoings, I will not lie in an attempt to get away with my misdeeds, I will apologize when I’ve done something wrong and I will deal with the consequences of my actions by facing them head on.  

  • I will not partake in conversations with other men when they are ridiculing women’s looks, bodies, or opinions.

  • I will remove the words bitch, ho, trick, chicken head, and all other derogatory names for women from my vocabulary because I recognize them to be sexist and degrading.

  • I will not refer to sex with a woman as hitting it, killing it, stabbing it, or anything that has violent connotations nor will it diminish the humanity of a woman by referring to sex with her as getting “it” or getting “some”

  • I will not define my manhood by the length of my penis, I will define my manhood as fulfilling promises I keep, in having integrity, in choosing mature solutions to problems and how I can be honest even when it’s difficult.

  • I will speak out when I see other men disrespecting women. 

  • I will honor my daughters as much as my sons.

  • I will not refer to myself as a pimp, a dog, a thug, or a baller because I will not let racist stereotypes define me.

  • I will learn how to communicate my feelings rather than deny I have them or trying to suppress them with sex, drugs, adrenaline, or alcohol. 

Copyright 2007 Scottie Lowe

Sunday, April 07, 2013

Made for Me





If I could have a man created specifically for me, with all the things I desire in a partner, I would ask for a man who took my breath away every time I saw him.  He would be tall and brown and beautiful and ooze integrity from every pore in his being.  He would be wise beyond his years and his words would be carefully chosen each time he spoke and they would flow like honey from his lips. 

If I could have a man created specifically for me, he would consider Africa his cultural and spiritual homeland and be willing to shed the belief systems that we have incorporated during slavery for a more holistic way of living.  He would be driven to fulfill his purpose in life and single minded in his dedication to a cause that is righteous and good.  He will meditate every morning and he would pray with me every night.  Of course, he will be able to cry on my shoulder and ask for support because he has come face to face with the demons that have kept men from evolving emotionally and he will have a commitment to redefining himself anew.  He will listen first and then speak, he will not internalize every comment as criticism, and he will apologize when he’s done something wrong. 

My perfect man will live off of a plant based diet, practice a spiritual system other than Christianity, and he will be openly bisexual.  He will have been in an intimate relationship with another man and loved him.  He will be comfortable with his sexuality not being tied to ridiculous roles that define him.  He will be a patient and attentive lover who will be willing to please and pamper me with the knowledge that I will only return the favor tenfold. 

He would never be intimidated by my intellect, potential, or my activism and he would support me and my efforts with words of encouragement and praise.  He would put other’s needs above his wants and we will travel the world in search of truth.  He will know the first and third verses of the Negro National Anthem and he will stand up when it’s being sung without being told.  He will never use the word nigger, nigga, or any phonetic or derivative spelling thereof out of reverence and respect for our ancestors. 

I want my perfect man to be equal parts creative and intelligent, equal parts spiritual and carnal.  Make him open-minded, tolerant of people’s differences, and as far left as he can get politically without falling off the scale and ending up in jail at Guantanmo Bay.  I want him to be an avid reader and lover of jazz, art, real theater (not Medea plays) and capable of articulating why the current brand of hip-hop is misogynist and offensive to not only women but to men as well. 

His commitment to our relationship will be beyond compare.  My perfect man would prioritize and sacrifice in order for us to continually grow.  Ahh, my perfect lover would hold me in his arms at night and kiss my forehead and whisper, “I love you, Scottie” and make me feel as if everything was right with the world.