Happy Thursday. I hope this day bring you joy. I hope you smile and laugh today.
Know that I am NOT proud of African Americans,as you may have already concluded. In fact, I am down right embarrassed by most of them. They are not living up to the expectations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we will be celebrating very soon.
So why did MLK die ? Did he die for Blacks to be the most illiterate ethnic group in America? Or maybe so that the "thugs" can wear their pants to their angle? Or maybe so that most of the Black males can play sports, grow big muscles on their bodies, and ignore the primary muscle in their head? Or so that most Black males can father as many children as possible, by as many women as possible, then abandon their children, leaving the "state", or struggling single mothers to care for them?
Hello. Is anyone listening/reading? Oh, excuse me, I forgot, most Black people don't read.:(
Someone recently sent me an email with the following letter attached. (THank YOU). I want to share it with you, and I want to know if this letter sounds eerily familiar.
Here goes;
BLACK PEOPLE, PLEASE, READ &
HEED. POIGNANT!!!
Chris Rock, a Black comedian, joked that Blacks don't read.
For those of you who heard it, this is the article
Dee Lee was reading this morning on a New York radio station. For those of you who didn't
hear it, this is very deep. This is a heavy piece and a Caucasian wrote it.
Dee Lee, CFP
Harvard Financial Educators
Dee Lee
THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES
We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks
without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that
they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.
Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of
containment... A great man once said, 'The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book.' We now live in the Information Age.. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes &Noble, and Amazon.com, not to mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should have been their fight all along), but few read consistently, if at all..
GREED is another powerful weapon of containment.
Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars in total yearly income (2.22%).
Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it.
Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing. They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU, And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them 'Status' or
that they have achieved their Dream.
They are fools! The vast majority of their people
are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities. With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to
see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even jeered them, saying he doesn't want their money, and look at how the fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show off to each other while we build solid
communities with the profits from our businesses that we market to them.
SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture.. A 'Talented Tenth' he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are segments of their culture that
has achieved some 'form' of success.
However, that segment missed the fullness of his
work. They didn't read that the 'Talented Tenth' was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented Ninety Percent in achieving a better life.. Instead, that segment has
created another class, a Buppie class that looks down on their people or aids them in a condescending manner. They will never achieve what we have.. Their selfishness does not
allow them to be able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance. When they do get together, their selfishness lets their egos get in the way of their goal Their
so-called help organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their community.
They are content to sit in conferences and
conventions in our hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best speakers, not to the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness? They steadfastly refuse to see that Together Each Achieves More (TEAM).
They do not understand that they are no better than
each other because of what they own, as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but one or two pay checks away from poverty... All of which is under the control of our pens
in our offices and our rooms.
Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as
they refuse to read, continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are helping' their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other than hold lavish conventions in our hotels. By the way, don't worry about any of them reading this letter, remember, 'THEY DON'T READ!!!!
(Prove them wrong.. Please pass this on! After
Reading)
Again, this was sent to me recently. I had already read it sometime ago, but I wanted to share this "letter" with you. This is what I have been writing about throughout most of my project. I can not even fathom why these ills are NOT discussed more by Blacks in "position of power", instead most want to discuss the latest fashions, or whose "beefing" in the music industry. Beefing is when there is some type of public disagreement.
Black people are presently in a state of comatose, and I seriously wonder what the hell is going on.(excuse my language). I love them and I know what their capabilities are if they are encouraged to apply themselves.
Please read, and have a wonderful day.
L. for Love
I do agree with parts of the letter but not with the message as a whole. It is certain that blacks in America and just about anywhere in the world, continue to lag behind other ethnic groups in the arena of socioeconomic status, it is not less certain the gap has been closed significantly over the last fifty years. That is not by any means a statement of contentment with the present situation nor is it a call to abandon the struggle that many have given their lives for, in order to pave the way for us and our children. It is however a statement of rejection to those who through negativity and discouragement want to down play the significance of the things achieved.
ReplyDeleteExtreme care must be exercised when reading statements like "blacks don't read" and “blacks are ignorant”, and blacks are this and that. Notice that in none of the statements words like some, most, a lot, many, few are used. They just say "blacks" implying that not a single black person reads, not a single black person is able to communicate effectively, be successful etc.
I see this, all inclusive negative destructive concept, as another attempt to put the label on us and see if we behave as labeled. It is well known that the labeling theory is an effective method of molding a child's mind. What do you think happens if our children go around hearing that all of us are ignorant and none of us reads? They will grow up to be ignorant and illiterate, for that is what he/she believes is expected of him/her.
The concepts of Greed and Selfishness are not exclusive of black people, but rather intrinsic to the human race as a whole. I believe these concepts gain their pervasive energy when certain factors are already present within the group as opposed to coming from the outside and forcing their energy onto the group.
As we look into the history of our race we see that some of those factors have been and continue to be an intrinsic part of us, thereby helping create an environment adequate for the embracing and fostering of a negative mindset. The breakup of the family, the rejection of our history and traditions, the embracing of cultures that were not our own, the acceptance of an identity that is not ours, are among others, factors that have allowed greed and selfishness to become major players when interacting with one another.
Again, I am not calling on our people to surrender to these forces and continue on the path of self annihilation we are currently traveling, I am simply stating that proper understanding of our history can give us the answer to our quest.
Black folk in America continue to face the challenge of rescuing the race. A process, that has to take place from the inside outwards and not vice versa. A process, that takes a lot more than writing pretty on an internet blog and a lot more than savvy eloquent speeches by politicians with dyed hair wearing Italian suits. It will take a lot more than well dressed sisters and cool looking brothers going to a church on Sunday, showing their latest model cars, going into a service praying to God to look over the less privileged and taking off to back to the suburbs like nothing else needs to be done.
Black folk need to understand that the fancy suits and the elaborate hairdos must be traded in for weekends in the hood helping people to fill an application for a GED diploma so they can at least say they are high school graduates. It takes the sisters to get off their high heels and go there and show teenage girls how to use contraception or how to have protected sex. The “cool” brothers need to step up to the plate and take care of their children both financially and emotionally. It takes going into the hood, and showing one young man the way out of there. Just one.
I just want to expand a little on something that I've always thought to be a weapon the powers-to-be use to keep the uneducated masses down. And by uneducated I mean from all ethnic and gender groups. Not only black men, but it is this group that is the most affected by this, according to the numbers.
ReplyDeleteI speak of the so-called "War on drugs". They know, that just by keeping most drugs illegal, a lot of these males sooner of later will self-destruct, and what a better and easier way to keep them hooked to a myriad of drugs and incarcerated? You can't send them to jail if they refuse to work on the plantation anymore, you can't hang them if they dare to look at a white woman, but create an artificial crime to which, because of poverty and lack of education, more than likely, they will fall pray of, and bingo, you can legally put them behind bars, and destroy their lifes.. And I don't want to sound too paranoid, but maybe that is the cause it's so easy to find these drugs in the street, even with all the law-enforcement "efforts". I'm not saying that the people who chose this kind of life, are not responsible for their actions and decisions. Nobody is forcing them to chose this path, but the deck is stacked, and the trap is set. Just a thought.
I have spent so much time thinking about what Mr. De la Fuente just described as a “trap” for young males of any under privileged background. It is clearly a trap when you see hundreds of law enforcement agents going after the drug user standing in a corner or the middle level dealer who is trying desperately to keep his head from being riddled with bullets at any time.
ReplyDeleteI tell you what we never see, we never see the high power drug traffickers getting convicted and being put behind bars for more than twenty four hours. We never see the hundreds of casual drug users, mostly “young professionals”, getting in any kind of trouble with the law because of their drug use. We never see the police raiding the campuses of any private university in the US, where in any given weekend at a frat party there is more cocaine consumed than in an entire “inner city” of a major cosmopolitan area.
Why is that, I have asked? The answers range from the mere plain stupid to the sublime. From, well we just follow orders, to well these people on the streets can take your life any moment. Well, I tell you, the people consuming drugs behind closed doors protected by their social status and political connections, are taking the lives of many innocent children, not only here at home but also abroad, by playing such a big role in the fostering of drug trafficking. How come nothing happens to them?
Sorry, I forgot there is a constitutional amendment that allows us to do whatever we want behind closed doors. Let me go and continue watching on television the brave men and women of the police force drawing their big guns on the black kids selling the nickel and dime bags of pot in the corner . Let go and be proud of their achievements on the war on drugs.