I Write Because I Can

I Write Because I Can 

 

In the United States a lowly and brutal trade took place in which men and women were kidnapped from the great land mass we know today as Afrika. After the import of humans from Afrika was discontinued a domestic breeding program took place and people were bred as chattel to perform work in various industry throughout the United States. In order to maintain a position of dominance many key abilities that enable human development were not allowed to be pursued by the victims of the United States in its quest for great wealth by ensuring its free labor through the oppression of the people who were being bought and sold like cattle or poultry. Even in the period of so called emancipation the powers that be installed the Black Codes and Jim Crow in order to keep a foothold up on the class of people who they did not want to gain the ability to raise himself to a higher station above that of which he found himself cast into at the bottom of the society.
Reading and writing were forbidden to the diaspora for hundreds of years in the United States and if it was discovered that a Black man or woman could read or write they were beaten, raped and lynched for this crime.
A website titled "Fight Municipal Court Abuse (court.rchp.com) includes the following in its list of significant anti-black literacy laws:

• 1819, Missouri: Prohibited assembling or teaching slaves to read or write
• 1829, Georgia: Prohibited teaching blacks to read, punished by fine and imprisonment
• 1832, Alabama and Virginia: Prohibited whites from teaching blacks to read or write, punished by fines and floggings
• 1833, Georgia: Prohibited blacks from working in reading or writing jobs (via an employment law), and prohibited teaching blacks, punished by fines and whippings (via an anti-literacy law)
• 1847, Missouri: Prohibited teaching blacks to read or write
  

Restrictions on the education of black students were not limited to the South. While teaching blacks in the North was not illegal, many Northern states, counties, and cities barred black students from public schools. What did the ability to read and write present to the master class that they went to such lengths to deprive Black people from being able to read and write ? Some how the saying “if yo want to hide something from a Black person put it in a book” comes to mind when I examine the prohibition placed on Black people barring them from the pursuit of becoming literate.
Black people were victims of a mass robbery, taken from Blacks was their religion, their culture, their language and the knowledge of self. Look at how the dynasties of ancient Egypt are depicted by western media and scholastic sources. The film adaptation of the Exodus with Moses played by Charlton Heston and Pharaoh played by Yul Brynner and every main character is a white person the only Black people in the movie are the slaves. This is just one example of how the United States rewrites history and uses the false narrative to install a white supremacist world view.

Today we are advancing in leaps and bounds into the high tech era. Many in the Black community are experiencing what is being termed as a digital divide. This is of little consequence when there is a literacy divide where many Black people are uneducated or under educated. How can people who can not read navigate a digital landscape ? I am a self educated man and I use the skills I learned to express my thoughts about the social interactions that exist within the United States. I write because I CAN and I take myself very seriously as a writer because I feel as though I have something of value to share with the world. As a man who has overcome very perilous situations and survived battles with members of my own community and assaults by members of other communities to evolve into a sagacious personality. I want to contribute to the well being of my brothers and sisters and writing is the medium I have chosen to do it with. In this day and age that has been falsely identified as post racism we see Black people being murdered before our very own eyes thanks to the Internet and people are taking to the streets in protests that have recently turned into full scale riots. There has to be voices that speak in measured tones and bring rational thought to bear in order to direct a balanced approach to the fight for social change. Writing is the weapon I choose to fight the system with. No nation state or group of individuals will beat the United States in a gunfight. The United States licks its chops and invites armed confrontation. The nation with the biggest budget for defense, the nation with the most military arms contractors and the nation who will kill its own President if the need arises. I choose to use words as weapons to plant the seeds of thought into the minds of those who will listen and heed my advice. The first steps we need to take as a people is to make an effort to educate one another. Liberation through education. The knowledge of self is the foundation of any nationalist movement. To define the Black men and women in the United States a vast amount to information has the be researched and the lies and inaccuracies made void and the truth brought to the surface. Their has to be a consensus among the people and by which a course is plotted to the goal we wish to reach. We cannot be divided by culture, religious beliefs or geography. The most divisive of these being religion because when people come to believe they are chosen by a deity and others are of little to no worth to their deity what is written in the book or books they prescribe to can be sharpened into a weapon that severs the bonds of friendship, family and community. We must become bound by our common interest in the struggle for liberation and nationhood. The descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave holocaust are a nation unto themselves and need to adopt a national identity that is free from the poisons that separate us.
I write because I can. I write as a tool to form nationalist points of view in the minds of Black people. The answer to white supremacy is not integration, it is Black supremacy. I do not want to harm white people, I want to protect Black people. In order to protect ourselves we must know who our enemy is.
The enemy to the masses of Black people is ignorance. We will be destroyed due to a lack of knowledge. I write because I can. I write in order to bring knowledge to Black people as a deterrent to triple stage darkness and to set those who will listen on a path towards liberated minds and unconfined thinking. To think outside of the box is to shed the box the slavers sat Black peoples minds in during the period of captivity and afterwards. Black Power to the Black People !

Covid 19 Aftermath of the Riots

At the beginning of June, we entered a period of turbulence across the United States, many cities in the United States were gripped by violent outbursts that rained destruction upon businesses large and small alike. The reasons for the rampage seem to be a culmination of anger directed at the establishment, opportunistic greed, a sagging economy due to the COVID 19 pandemic, and cabin fever from the shelter in place order.  Stores where totally ransacked and pillaged, some went as far as too burn them the ground. I was oblivious to the carnage because I was sitting with my elderly mother watching netflicks. When I went out the day after the initial destructive whirlwind to get some food and water I was shocked by the utter decimation I was seeing. All of the stores I visited were busted up and I could not get anything I needed that day. I was reminded of the response to the murder of Dr Martin Luther King when people took to the streets in many cities and busted, broke into and looted businesses. I recalled that Jeff Fort the leader of the Blackstone Rangers ordered the Blackstone Rangers to issue a stand-down order to the city residents on the south side of Chicago. Jeff Fort stated, " Do not destroy the resources you yourself will need ".  I was confronted once more of how the riots deprived people of necessary resources when I went out a week later to get medical supplies for my paraplegic son. Walgreens stores all over the south side were closed because they had been ravaged. The Family Dollar stores were gone as well. I was dismayed and about to give up and go home. While I was standing at the bus stop I spotted a mom and pop Black-owned Pharmacy and medical supply store. It was like manna from heaven. In the wake of the riots community residents are left desolate and in despair. Mothers can not obtain diapers and formula, elders can not fill prescriptions families can not get food for the table. The store owners in many cases have insurance and I am sure many of the business owners cashed some pretty large checks from their insurance providers. Agitators from outside of the community who traveled hundreds of miles to provoke violence and looting should be lined up and shot. Their actions did nothing to further the push for social justice. They did nothing to honor or in anyway avenge the victims of modern-day lynching by the police. No ideological foundation subscribes to self-destruction as a means in which to affect change. Why didn't these angry people destroy a police station? If the police are the hands of white supremacy should they not be the object of the people's ire? There are still services yet to return to the Black community and its been almost a month since the riots. We the people have to find a better way to communicate our anger and speak truth to power. We must also not allow our struggle to be hijacked and turned into a weapon against us. People who are not Black, have never been targeted by the police because of the color of their skin using the Black Lives Matter movement to further causes that have nothing to do with empowering Black men and women. They seize upon an opportunity to carry out their own insane motives and agendas. Others are swept up by the mob mentality and lose the ability to make a decision for themselves. For all of these reasons, Black men and women must become and remain vigilant in protecting the means and methods used to pursue black liberation. The power is in the people and the politics they address and the manner in which they are addressed will determine the outcome and whether or not the efforts put forth are productive or destructive. It is said that irrational times bring forth irrational behavior. Let us not be swept away by the tide of unjust and oppressive scenes displayed on social media or else we will form a weapon against ourselves. We must Analyze, adapt, and overcome or else we will lose everything including our very own lives.

This woman captures the reality of how misguided rage and anger or opportunistic looting impacts the residents of a community  https://youtu.be/MYbXlUx97NI