Right Now I'm...

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Self-taught

Seems that as an African American in this country, if you want to know any truths about our history, you have to review and search for them yourself and hope to unearth some truth. As kids growing up in this great country, we've been fed the history of our people that they want us to know. They tell us about the slavery (so it looks like they've admitted anything at all)... They brag about Crispus Attucks (who was the first man noted to have DIED FOR THE REVOLUTION) - never mind COUNTLESS slaves before him that died to get their owners to the point where they could fight. They tell us about Harriet Tubman and WEB Dubois... and all the "respectable" negroes who helped the Civil Rights movement, etc etc. But they leave out really important details. Stuff that if we knew about them that early... we may not be so snug sitting in our apts, and houses and we wouldn't be so complacent about the "Dream" that I feel will NEVER be fulfilled because now we dream about Play Stations and Bling Bling and just keeping our job one more day. We wouldn't care for those things because we might actually see that our "freedom" is feigned. That we really NEVER got free. That there is still very much of a struggle happening. But NO ONE IS FIGHTING. They've paralyzed us with mediocrity. We're content for second best (as long as we're wearing "top notch" clothing and have the latest car). In order to gain any REAL knowledge, it requires us getting out of our house. Out of our mindset. Out of our comfort zone. It's easy to think that the Middle passage was a journey on the Titanic and everyone had food and service and were treated so fairly on their way over here, as if they had a choice. Our people were treated like chattle. And were thrown over board when we were deemed "unnecessary". Those diagrams they show of how they stacked folks up, on their backs, in chains... THEY WERE LIKE THAT FOR MONTHS. Defacating, vomiting, having their menstrual cycles, eating, giving birth, dying IN THOSE POSITIONS FOR MONTHS. But they didn't really get into that kind of detail in Roots the TV series. The BOOK details all of that... but where can you hide something from a Negro Mind? In a book. And no one wants to read anymore. No one wants to think anymore. Let them think for us its easier. Let them tell us what to do. What to think. How to live. How to raise our kids (or not). It's EASIER. Why THINK?????


BECAUSE THAT IS OUR FREEDOM.

It's the ONLY thing, given the right awareness... that NO ONE can truly control.

Okay... so the rant is because after 30 years of being an African-Caribbean-American woman in this country... I've NEVER heard of THIS document:





And tonight, thanks to Black History Month... I watched a documentary (I know... more sitting in front of a screen) (PBS - Channel 13 in NYC. The series is called Slavery and the Making of America... about how this document was so fiery and moved the people so that slaves dreaming of freedom or even those who actually were escaping, carried a copy. And just reading it... and seeing the amazing dexterity of the language... the range of thought for him to reach out to the WORLD and address them as a Coloured Community... (Cause you know... they teach us that most black folk back then talkted lak dis an massuh be owa fren. Soon ah will be dun wit de truble ob de worl... hence my amazment, despite the MANY examples of lucid expression from the slaves of that time). I'm sad to STILL be learning about the injustices. I don't have to tell you that this man was killed. I don't have to tell you that the document flared up all the good white folk of the south. I hope that I don't have to tell you that his work inspired others to move on his thoughts... and DO something about it and RISK their comfort. Their routines. Their lives... to affect CHANGE.

Something we really don't know how to do anymore...

or do we. Click on the images above and see if it makes a difference to you anymore.

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