We as a people choose to live in an oppressed state.
It is what pays our mortgages, it with proper payment of a deductible keeps our kids healthy and strong. It allows us to cruise around in comfort and also displays itself in stunning 1080p resolution. It satiates us after eating, keeps our teeth white and goes well with an ice cold Coke.
It is also responsible for the pacification and the complacent feeling that prevents us for fighting to be free and equal in this, the land we built and died for and shames me to high heaven when it comes to professing love for some of us.
The matrix has you.
I feel and believe that we all are equal in faith and intelligence, how we individually use our blessed tools are indeed at the discretion of each and every one of us. I cannot believe as I live and walk in this plane of my own existence that so many of us due to fear, lack of overstanding and knowledge of self choose to be oppressed than to actually want to know what it is to be free.
As Joe Madison would say:
In America today, our cultural conditioning leads us to believe that everything that is white is superior and everything black is inferior and we as black people as a direct result of this are marginalized, undervalued and underestimated.
Based on how the majority of us are handling ourselves in today's society, internationally/abroad and within this current presidential election I would agree that us choosing the safe path of inferiority because of what material things (credit, status and acceptance) we think we'll lose is damning and outright embarrassing. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Here in a historic moment in time we have a chance to gather ourselves and take advantage of capitulation, a declining real estate market, cultural openings and business opportunities with our cousins from the motherland as well as an emerging technological boon and a reshaping of the legislative, judicial and executive branch of government we lay dormant at the foot of the first step, unable and incapable of going through the door and for that I hold back a tear.
The amount of disposable income and investment monies we have as a people here in America is as much or even more than the amount of the congress approved bailout which means if we would be willing to direct a percentage of our financial power the impact on the world would be tremendous.
Blogging to black folks is the modern day equivalent to the negro spiritual during slavery, yet for the most part, we keep up with the jonses and find new ways to impress and offend and information to both help us succeed and for our own edification is minimal.
I guess a scared negro will really get you killed, so most of us play it safe and accept the double standard of living just to hold on to the table scraps master throws to us. There are and have been many opportunities to have banks, investment houses, co-ops in many business models, music distribution and ownership and media outlets owned and operated by brown-skinned people that all of America could have supported, but even at HBCUs like Moorehouse where the business program is sponsored by Coca-Cola, no one is being taught entrepreneurialship. They're only being taught to serve the master by working for business and never teaching the fundamentals on which this great country was built.
And speaking of those fundamentals, this country was built on industry, slavery, independence from foreign products and an intricate barter system that never put us in debt to another nation. What makes you think folks at certain presidential election rallies would believe anything else? The disbelief in a certain candidate's qualifications is solely based on marginalization, underestimation and serious undervalue of that person's ability to walk and chew gum, so leading the free, white world seems like a daunting task for anyone that looks remotely close to the current democratic nominee because after all this time in their minds, we are still chattel. Some of us have been upgraded to three-fifths of a human being, sorry I forgot about that.
And for the most part some of us act like prime property just to get a crumb off the damn table.
So I say just kill me. I should be dead by the hand of our chosen oppressor because I have always broken free of that train of thought and have always tried to tell others which is dangerous in nature to most of the folks that choose to stay in the matrix. I don't expect a lot of folk to understand where I'm coming from because most have not made the decision in their minds that freedom can be had because they sold themselves to an idea not dreamt up for folks that look like them but they still try by hook or crook to get there.
So I ask the complacent negro, the sell out, the chaser of the dream not meant for them, the next time you see me make sure to say hello when you see me on the street. The constant reminder of the walking dead will motivate me to stay as far away from the elixirs and spells that convinced you to shuck and jive your way back into slavery without even participating in the prison industrial complex.
Wait, there is no magic potion, you choose to live this way.
Prisoners indeed. Seeing my people in this voluntary state makes me wish for death if I have to live like that more than you'll ever know. Oppression is worse than a thousand deaths because you have to live with the fact that you'll never be able to truly live free. Voluntary oppression is freedom suicide probably coated in chocolate so at least it'll taste good going down before you meet your maker by accepting a living hell.
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude. I get that statement now more than ever.
As long as I have life in these bones I will choose to do things that I feel will make my family and I free. It's not going to come across as stuff other brown-skinned folk would do. Many times in the past you had an opportunity to pacify me but I saw through the lies and I've seen a lot of black and white folk you've pacified and I cannot live on my knees. My life stands for something now. I will not live in the house of the oppressed with nothing to fight for. You should have killed me when you had the chance.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Oppression Is Worse Than Death: You Should Have Killed Me
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5 comments:
Okay, we’re going toe to toe on this one Hassan…sorta.
Knowledge is power. Not even money is power any more. Ask anyone on Wall Street. So if knowledge is power where does the real control dwell? In your mind of course.
A free people can only truly be free when they control their own fate.
There is no doubt that from the beginning of Slavery at Jamestown in 1619, to today, African-Americas have been victims of the greatest brain washing effort in the history of our planet.
Let me tell you how White People do it, and I know this because I am a White People.
To make any race feel inferior you have to first crush their idea of self worth. You have to make them feel less than anyone else. That’s easy to do. You tell them that they aren’t smart enough, you lock them out of institutes for higher learning, you make sure that their primary schools aren’t as good, and you continue to present negative images in the media. It works every time. But ya can’t let it look too obvious, so throw a few of them a bone. I think you have called them the “House Niggers” as I recall. It’s all a matter of appearance.
But that’s not enough; you have to make sure you keep them in bondage. Since we can’t throw shackles on them anymore, we do it in another way. We control their economy, reduce them to poverty, decimate their neighborhoods with drugs and violence, and then turn the whole thing into a police state. We incarcerate their men, degrade and abuse their women, all the while telling them that they aren’t good enough. Remember, we’ve been telling Blacks Folks this for almost 4oo years so we have that part down. All we have to do is perpetuate the myth.
Some today laugh at the notion from the 70’s of "Black Power". Laugh if you must, but Huey Newton was right. The Brother had it figured out. Take care of your own neighborhood, educate your own children, develop your own economy, you take care of you because the ideals of the White Institute of slavery are still alive and well and living in the inner cities and in rural America. So you need to counter that shit, and as Booby Seale once echoed from Malcolm X, by any means necessary.
Here’s the deal, while Barack Obama I think will be good for the country, he isn’t going to change the fate of Black Folks at all. He can’t, African-Americans will have to do that for themselves, and they can. As you pointed out Hassan, they have to throw off the chains of bondage. Arm yourself with education and develop your society on your own. Don’t wait for White America to do what is right. We simply aren’t going to.
Free your mind!
Obviously, I would like to say that the African-American community is everyone’s problem living who lives in this country, and personally, I think that it is. But the fact remains, Institutional Racism does exist, and as long as the power structure is what it is, the situation will remain.
Sorry for blogging on you blog Hassan but you know it goes on occasion. You have a way of making people think.
Terry,
We're not going toe to toe, we're 'going over the budget, line by line reducing earmarks and cutting excess spending. We're doing this together in a non-partisan effort to control greed and corral run away behavior'
Sorry... I try not to get caught up in the election.
Nail on the head here Terry, that's why I love and respect you. It's not that I try to garner a response or to get folks to think, we're supposed to do that anyway without folks like me prompting for anyone to do so and that's the problem...
We just don't think anymore. The desire to want to be free has been supressed so much that there aren't many folks like me questioning the new status quo and that bothers me.
There isn't that much high fructose corn syrup, bad TV, mindless hip hop, alcohol, ghetto fabulousness brought on by drug culture, easy pussy and menthol cigarettes to cloud my mind because I still know that we are no ways near freedom as a people in this country.
Sad that a lot of people are watching this blog to see my self destruction, waiting for something negative to happen and no one gets a clue. My words and thoughts are mere entertainment for many because only a few actually know that they can be free.
You are one of them. And it ain't weird that you are one of those 'white people' either.
It makes sense because you aren't a scared negro, and technically you can be one if you choose to be but you can see the matrix, hell we both helped program the damn in some way, shape or form thing back in the day.
Scared negroes get you killed.
Now who's blogging inside a blog?
Terry's point is elegant in its simplicity. I try to tell my kids at the school I teach at this lesson. I wonder if it is reaching them. To quote someone famous, I must do it or die trying...
I'm going to take this piece by piece....my first question is "don't the people have to be oppressed to suffer from oppression?" All of the characteristics you've listed that plague us black folks....are not considered as oppressive actions by "us black folks". You say we are in an oppressed state. My response to that (on behalf of other black folk) is that I like to eat and live inside. Which means working/earning a check to buy inflated groceries and pay high ass rent to live in a duplex with functioning heat.
Something else to consider is that your definition of free is obviously different from a lot of peoples. So YES...a scared negro will get YOU killed. See, you want a type of freedom that allows you to operate without the biases and rules of "the system" because "the system" is dictating to us that dreams and goals of higher achievement, entrepreneurship, and independent wealth are standards set by white people. Standards that we are constantly trying to meet. So at some point we decide that those aren't really our goals after all. Our goals are simply to eat and live inside. Are we oppressed? Have we settled? Are we being "safe"?
The key points you talk about; land ownership, cultural and business opportunities, and active involvement in the political process; at some point in time we decided that those either didn't apply to us or are not things that we want.
Example....we had a discussion once about the perceptions. When you talk to people (friend, family, etc...)about owning property (outside of the typical 30 year fixed on an as is house) and owning your own business...you are viewed as being one of those bourgie/uppity coloreds. Why is that? Because that is not something that WE do. Those of us that do are exceptions to the rule. You know....sell outs.
That magic potion you eluded to.....it's called eating and living inside.
"Freedom is NOT free" - Dr. John Henrik Clarke
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