Category Archives: Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective

a repost: What Does a Trump Victory Mean for Africa?

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Article posted on Black Agenda Report (click link for original)

 

This article previously appeared in Pambazuka News.

“Trump will sabotage the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and similar strategies to solve global problems.”

The most catastrophic long-term consequence is climate change. This is because Trump is a denialist who will give the green light to widespread fracking, coal and oil exploration. Africa will be the most adversely affected continent. United Nations scientists estimate that 9 out of 10 small-scale farmers are unlikely to farm by 2100 due to drying soils and global warming, plus extreme weather will also cause 180 million unnecessary African deaths by then, according to Christian Aid.

Under Trump, we can safely predict that Washington will no longer seek to control United Nations climate negotiations, as did Barack Obama’s administration. The WikiLeaks Clinton emails and State Department cables revealed blatant manipulations of the Copenhagen and Durban climate summits. Instead, Trump will simply pull the US out of the 2015 Paris agreement, as did George W. Bush from the Kyoto Protocol.

By good fortune, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change annual summit is underway this week in Morocco. The only logical move, if the delegates have any spine, is to expel the US State Department and establish the machinery for a major carbon tax applied to products associated with countries – the US especially – which raise emissions and threaten the survival of many species across the globe.

“Trump will simply pull the US out of the 2015 Paris agreement, as did George W. Bush from the Kyoto Protocol.”

Trump also heralds a rise in US racism and xenophobia, parallel to the Brexit vote by the British white working class. In neither case will local solutions be effective for the simple reason that neither Trump nor Theresa May (UK Prime Minister) are interested in the income redistribution required to benefit their economies.

And African elites who have – with a few exceptions – climbed over each other to please Washington, won’t find themselves welcome in the White House.

Hopefully the contagion of Trump’s racism – which will make life for Africans much harder – will be met by a major resistance movement including Africans from all walks of life in solidarity with various groups that stand to be oppressed by the US – women, African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, environmentalists, progressives of all sorts. This movement can shape up in the same spirit to those that gave solidarity during the fight against apartheid.

What are the likely economic consequences?

Consistent with his isolationism, world trade stagnation will continue. In the case of Africa, Trump is likely to retract benefits under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and reduce US aid.

That isolationism, in turn, could give Africans a chance to recalibrate what is now an excessive, self-destructive reliance on export of oil and gas, minerals and cash crops. Africa must focus on localizing its economies to be able to meet basic needs.

Trump’s hatred of what he terms the “globalists” is probably just hot electioneering rhetoric. It’s fair to predict that pro-corporate candidates will come forward as Trump allies to calm the crashing stock markets.

The “neoliberal” group of policy wonks who expressed disgust with Trump and favored Hillary Clinton will quickly make inroads into the new administration. They will ensure that the continuing US dominance in Western-leaning multilateral institutions is not disturbed.

We can simply anticipate more brazen US self-interest, as witnessed during the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush regimes, with less of the confusing rhetoric promoted by Obama and his allies.

What US policies on Africa are likely to change? With what impact?

To be frank, we can only offer guesses. Trump said literally nothing about Africa during his campaign. He wants to “rebuild US military power,” which might include strengthening the Pentagon’s controversial Africa Command, known as Africom.

Economically, it is worth noting Trump’s close relations to the oil and gas industry which comes via Vice President Mike Pence. This suggests that multinational corporations in the extractive industries who desire more explicit imperial support for African adventurism will be served well by Trump’s bully-boy mentality.

What does this mean for multilateral institutions and how will this affect Africa?

The US’s role in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will become nastier given the veto power it enjoys, holding more than 15% of the voting shares. Trump will probably hire a brutal neoliberal as his IMF executive director, someone who will tighten the screws on Africa using Washington’s veto power. The leaders of two big African economies are desperate for IMF credits: Nigeria ($29 billion) and Egypt ($12 billion).

In relation to the United Nations, an interesting question comes to mind: should the UN leadership now sitting in Trump’s Manhattan East Side neighborhood not develop a contingency plan to move UN headquarters out of the US? Trump promises to make life very hard for visitors who are Muslims, Libyans, Syrians and Mexicans – amongst others – so holding multilateral events in the US may soon be impossible.

The period ahead demands a very different multilateralism due to a number of expectations. The first is that Trump will sabotage the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and similar strategies to solve global problems, and wreck nuclear non-proliferation strategies such as the agreement that Obama painstakingly reached with Iran earlier this year.

And the second is that three of the BRICS’ nationalistic leaders – Vladimir Putin in Russia, Nahendra Modi in India and Michel Temer in Brazil – can be expected to establish much closer ties to Trump. This is likely to affect the balance of power between geographical regions, added to which are the drift of Pakistan, Turkey and the Philippines away from Washington. Trump’s hatred of China is another indeterminate factor.

Regardless of the geopolitical maneuvers, it’s time for a ‘multilateralism-from-below’ in which traditional progressive movements in civil society find common cause, because this is the most serious threat to humanity, the world economy and environment we’ve seen in living memory.

Patrick Bond is Director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society and a professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand.

a repost: Realities Faced by Black Canadians are a National Shame

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Reposts | 2 Comments

 

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And Canada was a place for refuge for us when nearly 180  years ago…smh.

 

Article posted on Black Agenda Report (click link for original post)

 

by Robyn Maynard

This article previously appeared in the Montreal Gazette.

“Black Montrealers continue to experience dehumanizing treatment across institutions.”

After holding consultations in Quebec, Nova Scotia and Ontario last month, the United Nations Working Group on People of African Descent issued a statement that sheds light on realities, too-often invisible to most Canadians, that should be seen as a national shame.

The group’s preliminary findings confirm what is already well known in Canada’s black communities: that systemic discrimination has subjected black people to racial profiling by law enforcement, soaring incarceration rates, disproportionate poverty and poor health, the over-apprehension of black children by child welfare agencies and lower graduation rates. Black women, they note, face a rate of poverty that is almost five times higher than that of white Canadian women, and are one of the fastest-growing groups in federal prisons.

Underlying these injustices, the UN Working Group has made clear, is systemic racism.

The UN is right to be concerned, and Montreal is by no means exempt from this criticism: Both its historical and contemporary realities are defined by a systemic anti-blackness that goes too frequently un-named. The enslavement of black (and indigenous) persons was not an uncommon practice in New France, and indeed was legal until 1834. The fact of slavery remains all around us: acclaimed art historian Charmaine Nelson reminds us that many present-day Montreal streets, buildings and institutions are named after white businessmen like James McGill and John Redpath who traded in plantation crops worked by slave labor.

Enslavement may be over, but centuries later black Montrealers — the largest visible minority in the city — continue to experience dehumanizing treatment across institutions. A 2010 study by sociologists Léonel Bernard and Christopher McAll found that it was over-surveillance, and not the rates of so-called “black crime,” that accounted for up to 60 per cent of the over-incarceration of black youth in Montreal.

“The enslavement of black (and indigenous) persons was not an uncommon practice in New France, and indeed was legal until 1834.”

A report commissioned by the Montreal police, leaked to La Presse, found that in St-Michel and Montréal-Nord, up to 40 per cent of black youth were stopped in 2006-2007, a rate that indicates a high degree of racial profiling by police officers.  Much of this heightened policing was justified to the public as curbing “gang activities,” when in reality, in 2009, only 1.6 per cent of crimes were gang related. High profile cases of police abuse of black Montrealers and alleged abuse continue to surface, including the recent case of Veckqueth Stevenson, a legally blind black man in his 50s, who has accused the police of using excessive force and unjustly arresting him, ironically, while he was at Nelson Mandela Park.

Black women and girls are not exempt, though we hear even less about their experiences locally; the case of Majiza Philip, a black woman who says she had her arm broken by police in 2014, is one example, however. A 2008 study found that black girls in Montreal are three times more likely than white girls the same age to have been arrested two times or more.

Beyond the criminal justice system, numerous studies have demonstrated that black children are apprehended from their homes by child welfare at alarming rates in Montreal, and this, too, can be attributed to racism.

The UN Working group is not the first to point out these injustices, nor are they the only ones proposing solutions. Black Lives Matter-Toronto and other black activist groups in Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal have been steadily mobilizing to address anti-black racism. Across cities, black communities have denounced, among other issues, the recent deaths of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa, and Bony Jean-Pierre in Montreal, both at the hands of police in 2016.

If Canada intends to genuinely reckon with its still-living legacy of black enslavement, the injustices brought to light by the UN — alongside those highlighted by black activists around the country — need to be both addressed and redressed.

Robyn Maynard is an activist and writer living in Montreal, author of the forthcoming book Policing Black Bodies (2017).

a repost: Financial Whistleblower Explains What’s About to Happen to the Economy

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness..., Reposts | 6 Comments

Posted on the Waking Times (click ling for original article)

 

“How is the government going to get people to pay their taxes if the government is not viewed as legitimate?” ~Catherine Austin Fitts

 

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The world economy is designed to fail through the mechanism of a banking system that requires all users of money to pay usury every time a transaction takes place. In this way, the financial systems of the world can be manipulated into a managed collapse, thereby causing global chaos so that the world’s nations and citizens can be tricked into demanding a global currency managed a global elite.

Problem, reaction, solution. Economic hit man John Perkins wrote about this strategy as it was used in the 20th century to bring developing nations under the control of the international monetary fund and transnational profiteers, and at present this scheme is being globalized.

“If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global empire.” ~John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

For decades now, the dollar has been in a slow burn style of collapse, and while many journalists, primarily outside of the mainstream, have been warning the world about how and why this is happening, we’re quickly approaching a turning point, where the slow burn moves into something more severe. While at first glance this seems like a frightening potentiality, the truth is that an economic collapse may very well be our best chance at freeing ourselves from the rule of the Gods of Money.

A Whistleblower Warns Us and Gives Us Hope

Speaking to Greg Hunter of USA Watchdog news, former Wall Street banker and former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the first Bush Administration, Catherine Austin Fitts explains why the slow burn is about to come to an end.

“The system has the capacity with monetary policy in one sense to keep going forever if the force and military capacity is there to do it, but at some point, you burn through the fat, you burn through the muscle and then you have to change institutions.” ~Catherine Austin Fitts

During the financial crisis of 2008, the government was able to prevent an uncontrolled firestorm collapse of the system by colluding with the chiefs of the financial sector, giving them bailouts of extraordinary magnitude, then inflating the dollar by the Federal Reserve’s introduction of quantitative easing. Eight years later, this tactic has reached its limit, however it has given the public significant reason and time to understand why our economy functions the way it does, and people are losing faith in our leadership.

“It’s going to be extremely difficult to get people to continue to pay their taxes when they’re highly confident the money’s not being spent legally and it’s going to the advantage of small parties or things that they don’t understand. And so you can’t move further without institutional overhaul.” ~Catherine Austin Fitts

READ: Former Wall St. Banker Suggests Global Debt May Not be Owned by Humans

The thing that frightens her most is the fact that groups within the U.S., such as ALEC, are already calling for changes in the law and even a new constitutional convention to overhaul these institutions. The financial sector has already been operating outside of the law and beyond the constitution for some twenty plus years, and if we haven’t been using the constitution, she notes, then why do they wish to change it?

“If you want to enforce the Constitution or fix things, that’s what you do. The reason you get a Constitutional Convention is you want to tear it up because you’re worried, now that people realize the extent of the corruption, that they’re going to try and enforce.” ~Catherine Austin Fitts

Her warning is that as people continue to wake up to the corruption of our government and financial rulers, the entrenched elites who are fully invested in destroying the middle class will fight tooth and nail to prevent us from holding them accountable, by means of bringing more Draconian laws into place to protect themselves.

In this light, the economic war that is brewing isn’t completely technical, it is social as well, quickly becoming class warfare. The world’s financial elite are in grave danger of being held to the fire for their crimes, and surely they know they how quickly things can change in favor of the populous, as historical events like the French Revolution have shown.

Prepare Now

As individuals stuck in the debt-slave matrix, there is very little we can do to challenge this sort of massive global scheme as it’s happening, however, preparing now for collapse is our best chance of chucking our burden of debt to these people, if they are even human, and of creating a future without such obvious criminal financial tyranny holding us back.

Working now to expose these criminals is imperative so that when the ball drops, ordinary people understand why, how and who is truly to blame, thereby making resisting to the takeover possible. Taking care of personal emergency preparations by gathering healthy storable foods, networking in your community, and having plans in place to survive are absolutely necessary at this stage, and once this is done, efforts to awaken others are critical.

a repost: Malcolm X on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Reposts | 1 Comment

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Posted on Black Agenda Report (click link for original post)

 

A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

It’s that time again, it’s presidential election season, and as we hear every four years, THIS is the most important presidential election of our lives. The fact that you’ve heard that before should tell us something. It should us that in presidential years, many old things becomes new again, often because so much of what we’re told IS new is really pretty old.

Malcolm X has been dead now a half century, dead for more years than he was ever alive. But since at least one of the tricks and traps deployed to fool, frustrate and neutralize our grandparents’ right to vote hasn’t changed much we might want to listen carefully to what Malcolm’s words in the aftermath of the 1964 presidential election.

“If Johnson had been running all by himself, he would not have been acceptable to anyone. The only thing that made him acceptable to the world was that the shrewd capitalists, the shrewd imperialists, knew that the only way people would run toward the fox would be if you showed them a wolf. So they created a ghastly alternative. And it had the whole world — including people who call themselves Marxists — hoping that Johnson would beat Goldwater.”

Like today’s Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was a truly reprehensible and frightening figure, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned racial discrimination in public accommodations, and who favored the use of nuclear weapons to defoliate the Vietnamese countryside. Also like Donald Trump, Goldwater never really stood a chance of winning the election. Goldwater the wolf was buried beneath a Johnson landslide, carrying only 6 out of the 50 states. Republican officeholders are running away from Donald Trump not because he’s a racist bufoon but because he’s expected to lose states Republicans are accustomed to winning.

The fox, Lyndon Baines Johnson went on to start a war in Indochina that killed three million Vietnamese alone. LBJ defoliated the Vietnamese countryside with millions of tons of Agent Orange instead of nukes, causing hundreds of thousands of hideous and gruesome birth defects that continue to this day.

The wolf and the fox this year are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump is a real estate con man, a racist and a hyper-entitled sexual predator who talks about building walls and banning Muslims. Fortunately for us all, Trump has never been in government. Hillary has scarcely ever been out of government. She’s fronted for Wal-Mart, executed bloody regime change in Libya, brought US troops to Ukraine on the Russian border, and publicly itches for a showdown in Syria. Thanks to Wikileaks there is copious evidence that Hillary’s public stands on a wide range of issues from charter schools to so-called trade agreements, to fracking and social security stand in stark contrast to the promises she makes to the powerful.

Just as it worked 52 years ago, the overwhelming defeat of her wolvish opponent will give Hillary the appearance of a mandate. But the margin of Hillary’s victory provides those of us on the left an unprecedented opportunity. It means there is no need for those who imagine themselves on the of jobs, justice, peace and the planet to ride to Hilllary’s rescue and ensure the defeat of Donald Trump. Trump has already beaten himself.

This election is our best chance to break out of the decades-old two party trap and build a new political force, a new political party. The Green Party is the only peace party, the only party that stands for people and planet over profit, and our only opportunity to vote our hopes, not our fears. It’s time to choose.

We vote Green and build Green, we can consign the political conundrum Malcolm X eloquently described a half century ago to the garbage can of history. Or we can vote for Hillary, and Malcolm’s words will be as applicable four or eight years or twenty years from now as they have been for the last fifty. For Black Agenda Radio I’m Bruce Dixon.

a repost: Deep African Thought

by in Metaphysics, Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness... | Leave a comment

Posted on ThyBlackMan.com (click link for original post)

 

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“The word ‘Ubuntu’ comes from one of the Bantu dialects of Africa. It is a traditional African philosophy that gives an understanding of us as human beings in relation with the rest of the world. According to Ubuntu, there exists a common link between us all and it is through this tie, through our interaction with our fellow human beings, that we discover our own human qualities. The Zulus would say, “Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu”, which means that a person is a person through other persons. We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others.” Ubuntu philosophy as an African philosophy for peace  http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20359

Last week we discussed the need to rethink Africa and our relationship to the continent and our ancient forbearers. We desperately need to do this because we have been indoctrinated and programmed to see Africa as backward, uncivilized, bereft of culture other than drumming and dancing and as offering nothing noteworthy to humanity. Last week I suggested these notions propagated by our Arab and European enemies were/are designed to assuage any guilt they felt about their invasions, rape, theft, capture, kidnapping and colonization of African people and as a way to justify their pillage, plunder and rapine of Africa.  I say any guilt because they have never repented of their sins of imperialism and plunder over the years. They’ve only shifted their modus operandi to accommodate and use their advanced material weaponry and psychological warfare so their oppression is less obvious because it is so thorough and all pervasive.

We need to realize most of what these foreigners, invaders and aliens said/say about Africa is not true. During their invasions they discovered countless ruins of great civilizations, clear cut evidence of advanced cultures and vast treasures that they suppressed, stole, appropriated to whites or extraterrestrials.

The ruling class who disseminate their “history“, archeology, anthropology and “education” are even at odds with first hand eye witness accounts by Arabs and Europeans who chronicled the magnificence of Africa and its people! Their denial of history and African accomplishments speaks volumes about themselves and their deep seated inadequacies. Western “education” reflects the consciousness and values of the ruling class. In this case the megalomaniacal capitalists who financed the industrial and technological “revolutions” that needed brute labor and dim intellect to keep the machines humming, to develop and maintain the wasteful, pollution causing factories, businesses and armies that fueled the rise and expansion of the Western economy.

Schools and curricula were developed to forge common identities for the emerging European nation states out of diverse ethnic, tribal and racial groups and prepare them to plunder the world, to work in the factories, mills, mines and large farms.  The downside of this ongoing pattern is the ecocide, total disrespect and desecration of nature the West demonstrates with each passing minute, day, month, year.

Their fantasies about Europe being the epicenter of all human progress gives whites a false sense of superiority and non-Europeans suffering under their imperialistic hegemony suffer from a debilitating sense of inferiority, emptiness, defeat and purposelessness. Part of their brainwashing technique is to always show us as defeated, subjugated and happily acquiescing to their domination.

But we are not defeated, we’ve only been brainwashed to think we are. We can use Black History Month to jump start and reenergize ourselves to begin a three hundred sixty five day search for our true selves, our rich history, heritage and innate potential.  We can use Black History Month to decolonize our minds, to deprogram ourselves and erase the lies and distortions we have been feed and forced to internalize about Africa, Africans and ourselves. We can use Black History Month to discover how our ancestors fought back and defeated their enemies.

As I said last week we are a deep and creative people. The depths of our creativity are not just in the monuments our ancestors left but in the values and consciousness that created and produced them. At the root of those accomplishments was a cosmology, a philosophy and value system which is antithetical to that of the Europeans, what we have been brainwashed and conditioned to internalize. African technology, architecture, building, science and social organization were all based upon deep metaphysical and humanitarian values. These values are found throughout the continent in every indigenous traditional culture and group.

At the core of these values was/is the notion we are a spiritual people linked and connected to a vast spiritual universe most of which is undetectable to the five senses. All Africans believe in an invisible universal energy/intelligence or force that permeates all creation. Europeans called this idea pan-theism god in everything. Europeans don’t believe or comprehend this because they are essentially materialists, they only accept what they can experience via the senses; although their astrophysicists and physicists now say the universe is composed of pure energy that vibrates a differing frequencies from the undetectable ultra-ethereal to the densest levels we call physical matter.

Our ancestors articulated this thousands of years ago. Read George G.M. James great work Stolen Legacy  to get a glimpse of how a handful of Greek “philosophers” plagiarized African cosmology and philosophy. James points out that to the rank and file Greeks these plagiarized African ideas were totally foreign and incomprehensible.

The metaphysical ideas of Kemet are thousands of years old and were probably originated by Africans who originated outside the NileValley deep in the interior of Africa. We are discovering more about the values that produced the societies in South Africa and we should  explore and learn more about them. Discerning and understanding these values and the consciousness of the people gives us deeper insight into their culture their social organization and how they interacted with each other, others and their immediate and distant environments.

In South Africa there is an ancient word Ubuntu that to me is the essence of African, holism, deep thought and philosophy. “The word ‘Ubuntu‘ originates from one of the Bantu dialects of Africa, and is pronounced as uu-Boon-too. It is a traditional African philosophy that offers us an understanding of ourselves in relation with the world. According to Ubuntu, there exists a common bond between us all and it is through this bond, through our interaction with our fellow human beings, that we discover our own human qualities. Or as the Zulus would say, ‘Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu’, which means that a person is a person through other persons. We affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others. The South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes Ubuntu as:

‘It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of Ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.’” https://motivationinspirationandlife.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/ubuntu-i-am-what-i-am-because-of-who-we-all-are/

Ubuntu is an ancient African concept as is Ma’at (Divine Order, Truth, Balance, Harmony, Justice, Righteousness and Reciprocity). Both were the root and underpinning of African culture, social, ethical and relational values. Both were the philosophical mortar that held the societies together, that allowed them to define themselves within a communal framework and live in a collective, harmonious manner. This philosophy laid the foundation of a genuine attempt to live together in harmony and peace.

Were the societies perfect? Of course not. They were the first to do it so they learned by trial error, intuition and experience. Our African ancestors put into place family, peer and age social controls to reinforce values of Ubuntu and Ma’at. For thousands of years we worked to live together in harmony because our values were collective and humane not exploitative and rapacious.

What if we rediscovered, relearned and revitalized Ubuntu and Ma’at then adapted them to modern living as a way of transcending this hostile environment? What if we looked for an alternative to the crass materialism, decadence and emptiness of the West and embraced our own African values and philosophies?  How would the quality of our lives be different if we based our thinking, emotions, actions and relationships on Ubuntu and Ma’at? This is not as far fetched as you might think. We do have agency in this, we can choose the values we live by.

The Western way is unsustainable, it is built on selfishness, greed, theft, war, exploitation and wanton violence. That model cannot last forever, its inhumane values are destroying the planet as we speak! We see the concomitant moral rot and devastation all around us now. Things are not getting better. We have to search for and find an alternative to European madness and psychopathy.

Social reform only goes so far in a morally depraved culture like this. We need a total transformation, a turnaround in values and I am suggesting we look to our African ancestral roots for the solutions to these issues. Ubuntu is such a solution.  Africans are a deep and creative people.  As Desmond Tutu said, “The quality of Ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.”

We need to seriously rethink Africa, embrace our powerful legacy of deep thought, humane values, live and restructure our relationships in accordance to those values. Failure to do so will result in sure spiritual, psychological and physical death.

Written by Junious Ricardo Stanton

a repost: The Lack Of Accountability From Black Parents When It Comes To Black Kids Being Harmed In The American Public School System

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective | 2 Comments

Originally posted on ThyBlackman.com (click link on original link)

I had read a story about a 6 year old black girl in Chicago that was arrested for “allegedly” stealing a piece of candy off a teacher’s desk by a racist security guard.

The girl’s mother told the Daily News that the school treated her daughter very harshly like other black kids are treated at the school.

The racist guard said, ‘I’m teaching her a f?—?-g lesson. She took a piece of candy and I handcuffed her under the stairs”

My first thought was why is there no protocols to prevent incidents like this. I know why because the main protocol they like to use on black kids, particularly black boys is called systemic racism that makes them harm our kids in very irreparable ways.

Second, these black parents that deliberately throw their kids to these evil savages wanna get all mad and shit when their kids get harmed by them and wanna blame them solely for harming their child.

Third, I noticed many black parents are coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why they can’t even fathom taking up the responsibility of educating their own children when they say things like

1) I gotta work today

2) It’s too hard

3) It’s too stressful

4) I don’t have the time nor energy to do that and all these other weak pathetic excuses that they can come up with.

For me personally, these black parents that put their kids in harm’s way by sending them to these bigots are ALSO to blame for their kids being harmed by them because they actually chose to send their kids to these racist paternalistic baby sitting services to be harmed.

When I hear stories like the 6 year old girl arrested or boy suspended for having an afro, it makes me angry not only at the bigot controlled school system, but also at the parents that agreed to put their kids in harm’s way.

And then these black parents will also blame the school system for destroying their son’s future by putting him in jail without taking accountability for their own actions of setting their child up for his own extermination by the prison system which disgusts me.

One of the worst mistakes that we ever did during the 20th century was actually putting our kids in the hands of our historical enemy. Even Malcolm X said it best, “Only a fool would allow the enemy to teach their children” and that statement is so true, especially in today’s society.

Nowadays, there are however more black parents taking up the responsibility of educating their own kids because black parents are and should be their child’s first teacher because nobody can truly understand their child like they can.

The Conclusion – If you want to boost your child’s self-esteem and empower them, homeschool them and keep them out of the toxically racist public school system.

Staff Writer; Joe Davis

a repost: Stop Whining, Take Action

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness... | Leave a comment

 

Originally posted on ThyBlackman.com (Click link for original article)

Suffering then is not something that happens to us in such a way that we have no control over it. Suffering is not something that we must endure in order to be worthwhile. In fact, it is our own controllable reaction to experiences which determines how those experiences will affect us. Man’s responses to his experiences are based on his view of those experiences. If a painful experience is viewed as a step in his inevitable suffering plight, he passively submits to the pain and expenses it in all the intensity of its agony.  If the same painful experience is viewed as an obstacle for man’s mastery, man actively confronts the pain and seeks to overcome it. If he accepts the pain as the natural signal of a need for some type of change of either a physical or metaphysical form, then the person knows that something must and can be done.” Dr Naim Akbar The Community of Self  page 59.

No one escapes the vicissitudes of life, the pain and suffering, the peaks and valleys of life the things William Shakespeare called “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” No one is immune or exempt from experiences that knock the wind out of us, that throw us for a loop or knock us down. There is no avoidance or escape from what some call failure because failure  is part of the success process. Life is such that each one of us must experience setbacks, obstacles, defeats and disappointment to go along with and counter balance the successes, triumphs, exhilarations and joys of living.

I tell folks the only people with no problems we know of, are in the cemetery. Problems, challenges, setbacks  and disappointment are all part of the life experience. We cannot evade them. So if you are going through something be glad, be thankful; it means you are still alive. Life is such that challenges are an integral aspect of our existence.

So if this is true and it is, then we should not be overly concerned about problems. We have to see beyond the obstacles, challenges and pain and focus on our goals, focus on our dreams and aspirations and how we can bring them into being, how we can manifest them on this plane. I am not suggesting we ignore problems. We must acknowledge them but don’t become overwhelmed or use our imagination to awfulize the challenge, problem or situation by blowing it our of proportion and making it seem worse than it really is.

They say within every problem lies the seed of its resolution. So we need to look at the problem not as an end or a roadblock but as a bridge to where we want to go be or do. Many of our problems we bring on ourselves or we contribute to. Challenges are a way for us to look at ourselves, take inventory of our strengths, talents and goals and decide whether we want to give up and give out or do we find a way or make a way out of no way.

We come from creative people, genii who mapped and charted the stars,  were the first to navigate rivers and oceans,  the first to drain swamps, irrigate land, built pyramids that modern man still doesn’t know how they did it. Our ancestors solved problems of survival and asked the profoundest questions about human existence and came to some deep conclusions. Western philosophy is based loosely on what our ancestors discovered.

Our African ancestors were the first philosophers, the first metaphysicians, their knowledge and discoveries laid the foundation for all science, philosophy and ethics. This creativity, this intuition, this awesomeness is in our DNA. We just have to remember, meaning to rejoin ourselves with this ancient wisdom and potential. The same DIVINITY and INFINITE INTELLIGENCE that was available to our ancestors is accessible to us right here right now! We just have to tap into it. We have to know and realize we can tap into it at any time at any place and it will come to us and offer ways to overcome, endure and transcend any situation.

Our ancestors who were brought to these shores were faced with horrific challenges, degradation and unfathomable abuse. But they found ways to overcome and stand tall. When  you are having difficulties get centered and calm your breathing, then allow the peace within you to take over. Peace and sobriety are our real essence. Remember you have the power to define your situation, you can use your imagination to see a different you, a different response to whatever you are going through. Do not try to tell INFINITE INTELLIGENCE how to resolve your situation, listen to the still small voice within you and trust it has your best interests even if what you hear seems impractical. Learn to think beyond your own mental limitations, to expand what you think is possible. The UNIVERSE is on our side, we are part of it and it is part of us so it wants the best for us at all times.

As I said problems are opportunities for us to see what we are made of, how resourceful, resilient and awesome we really are. Many of these issues we’ve brought on ourselves due to foolishness, our egos run amuck or the inevitable consequences of faulty thinking and actions. We have to learn to take ownership for our flawed thinking, recognize this is our responsibility and work to alter those thoughts and decisions that took us down the slippery slope.

You are not being punished by your idea of god or your theology. Some of this is the result of our own erroneous thoughts and actions. Some things are beyond our control, the only response is to control yourself by reframing how you perceive and react to what is going on. While we may not have any control over the situation we can control how we respond, how we react, how and what we think about it. We have power and agency in all situations whether we can change the situation or not.

I once saw a bumper sticker that read, “Help Stamp Out Global Whining“. I chuckled when I saw it but actually there is a message in it. We have the ability to choose whether we whine about our lives, our circumstances and situations or we man and woman up and respond in a mature fashion. We can choose to give up, wallow in self-pity and helplessness or we can choose to solve or resolve the challenges in our  lives.

If the situation is chronic we can make or find a way to make it bearable without resorting to negative thoughts, maladaptive behaviors or harmful addictions. We can transcend our challenges in a healthy manner, be in it but not of it; not allow it to get the best of us. Someone once said, “Circumstances don’t make a person, they reveal him or her.”  Your are  not defined by your troubles. You are greater than anything that is bothering you.  Stop whining and choose to be resilient. Look at the situation, determine to figure out how to resolve the issues, be persistent and patient until you achieve your breakthrough.

Written by Junious Ricardo Stanton

a repost: In 2016 Can we rebuild Black Wall Street?

by in Politics from a Black-Concious Perspective, Randomness... | Leave a comment

Original article link: http://www.blackonomics.com/2016/08/can-we-rebuild-black-wall-street-august-2016/

 

“There are [Blacks] who are willing to worship the pyramids of 4,000 years ago but will not build pyramids in the present so their children may see what they left behind as well. We have a leadership who rallies the people to look at past glories but leave their children neglected; who will make great analytical and oratorical dissertations on the inadequacies of Eurocentric education and yet will not contribute one penny of their money or their time to the construction of their own schools.” Dr. Amos Wilson, Afrikan Centered Consciousness versus the New World Order.

Montoya Smith, host of the Atlanta talk show, Mental Dialogue, asked: Can we rebuild Black Wall Street? “No, really,” he added, recognizing the depth of his question and assuring folks he was not kidding or just being rhetorical.

So, what was Black Wall Street? Most of what I have learned about it was obtained from a book by John Sibley Butler titled, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans, A Reconsideration of Race and Economics, which contains an exhaustive section on Tulsa, Oklahoma’s history and a detailed account of what took place in its Greenwood District. Some of the information below comes from Dr. Butler’s book. I also learned from face to face conversations with six of the survivors of the Tulsa Riot.

Black Wall Street was burned to the ground in 1921 by a White mob. The Greenwood District, located in the northern section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was once called “Negro Wall Street,” and “Little Africa.” It was home to hundreds of Black owned businesses and sat on valuable land desired by White oil speculators, who even tried to buy parcels of that land from Blacks for ten cents on the dollar immediately following the Tulsa riot. Fortunately and wisely, Blacks refused to sell.

Despite hundreds of Black lives lost in the riot and all of Greenwood’s businesses destroyed, the story of that economic enclave during the ensuing seventeen years was one of triumph over tragedy. By 1923, as a result of Blacks pooling their money to capitalize new enterprises, the Black business district was even larger than before, and Greenwood was completely restored by Black people by 1938. Ultimately, urban renewal and integration, which allowed Blacks to shop at non-Black stores, led to the demise of “Black Wall Street.”

To Amos Wilson’s point, Greenwood was a pyramid built by Blacks in the early 1900’s. Instead of looking back and merely reveling in the successes if Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and other enclaves that came before them, Black people in Greenwood built upon those legacies. Thus, my answer to the question posed by Montoya Smith, “Can we rebuild Black Wall Street?” was and is an emphatic and unequivocal, “YES!”

My answer to that question is based on the fact that we have done it before under far worse circumstances than we are under today. But as I listened to the other guest on Montoya’s show, Mr. Jay West, entrepreneur and President of the Lithonia Small Business and Merchants Association located on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, I became even more convinced.

Immediately impressed by Mr. West and the work his group is doing in a city that is approximately 85% Black, I sought him out to learn more. Jay West understands and promotes local business support. “I do 95% of my shopping right here in Lithonia,” West said, “because I know that one dollar spent here has the multiplier effect of three dollars, as our businesses support one another.”

West is absolutely correct, and the Lithonia merchants association will benefit collectively and individually from circulating their dollars; they will grow their businesses and create more jobs. This nascent organization can be the model from which new Black Wall Streets can be rebuilt across this nation; it is on track to encourage more entrepreneurship and demonstrate the power of a cohesive, mutually supportive, self-directed, and economically empowered network of conscious business owners and consumers who are committed to growth and sustainability.

True partnerships between educated consumers and business professionals in Black economic enclaves comprise the basis for real power in the marketplace, i.e. collective purchasing programs and affinity groups, revolving loan funds, business equity funds, and financial leverage to stimulate future growth. Lithonia is in that space right now, and there is plenty of room for more cities and segments within those cities to do the same.

To draw the discussion closer to home in Atlanta, “Can Sweet Auburn be sweet again?” John Wesley Dobbs called it the “richest Negro street in the world.” Suffering its own riot in 1906 that left 25 Black men dead, Sweet Auburn can also be rebuilt, and with leaders like Jay West and others in Atlanta, I am confident that pyramid will be built.

Written By James E. Clingman