I was 5 years old in Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on April 4, 1968.
We were "Bethlehem," the labeling by the United Methodist Church for day care services on our side of town. "Wesleyan" was reserved for West Winston-Salem.
Yes. We were segregated, and our lives reflected it visibly. Now, as I travel home, the signs are down, we no longer just go to the "Ritz" Movie Theater and anyone can ride on any part of the Metro they desire. East Winston is still segregated, de facto versus legal writ now. Economics, opportunity, education and globalization are the new fences, the new overseers. Bethlehem and Wesleyan are still community centers serving a new generation of the same constituents albeit interspersed with Hispanics now.
I remember April 3, 1968 sitting next to my dad as Dr. King preached a sermon. I asked him what he means by "I've been to the mountain top?" I, my teacher, my parents, my neighbors and that kindergarten class were soon to find out in the cruelest fashion.
We found out in that kindergarten class that life can be cruel, that flawed heroes can fall. We found out you can cry tears until your eyes burn and your gut hurts. We found out that our teachers hurt just as much as we did. We heard horns honking and saw rebel flags flying outside and later on the news: as we cried in agony, many celebrated our loss. I'm told by Vietnam veterans the scene was similar in country to the stress and detriment of soldiers of color. We graduated from kindergarten into a world without our Dr. King.
I appreciate the impact Martin Luther King had on our lives in that we understood our loss: usually at that age (as I recall), loss is not so personal even within the family unless it is a close, involved relative. He was like the uncle we’d never met and knew somehow his importance in our collective plight. We played, as kids are apt to after the midmorning nap. That was the only thing we could think to do.
Today, we are his legacy. And what we do with that legacy will be an interesting test of the democratic experiment known as America. Those that denigrate this commentary with simplistic, salacious epithets do not have the vocabulary or the intelligence to see their worldview other than that of a pie that is being subdivided to their disadvantage, that their culture and privilege somehow is threatened. Nothing could be further from the truth: no one registers culture, nationality or political party at the gas pump, in the supermarket, when your company has downsized you for cheaper labor overseas. We are all America.
John Donne said it best "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Four-Thousand Faces
Four-thousand faces,
Human beings from divergent lives and various places,
When we'd crossed the first Rubicon of 1,000 faces,
I wrote a poem that I hoped would reveal to us
Maniacal machinations
Are not what represent us, and
Are not the ways of democracies...
The hypocrisy of holding so-called "elections"
At the same time withholding the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.
That deserves to be said again:
That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.
Yet, "we're safer" for the effort,
"So, what?" That the electorate has turned their opinions on it.
From one who served in the wealthy and privileged Houston, Texas "Champagne Unit?"
And the ever smirking, fish-in-a-barrel quail killing Darth Elmer Fudd
With "other priorities..."
It's easy to talk tough as chicken-hawks!
The election is already fixed for another internment of the junta
Masquerading as our government,
We genuflect between sexist and racist rants
That takes our focus off the chance
For real, lasting change that could positively affect
The next generation...
Four-thousand faces,
Human beings from divergent lives and various places
Their noble sacrifice
The blood on an arcane altar
to gods that take their spoils from our tax coffers
paid for by an economy faltering
[I fear: and I wish desperately to be wrong]
on the late, Great United States.
Human beings from divergent lives and various places,
When we'd crossed the first Rubicon of 1,000 faces,
I wrote a poem that I hoped would reveal to us
Maniacal machinations
Are not what represent us, and
Are not the ways of democracies...
The hypocrisy of holding so-called "elections"
At the same time withholding the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.
That deserves to be said again:
That 600,000 plus Pentagon documents conclude and admit:
Saddam Hussein had no connection to Al-Qaeda or 9/11.
Yet, "we're safer" for the effort,
"So, what?" That the electorate has turned their opinions on it.
From one who served in the wealthy and privileged Houston, Texas "Champagne Unit?"
And the ever smirking, fish-in-a-barrel quail killing Darth Elmer Fudd
With "other priorities..."
It's easy to talk tough as chicken-hawks!
The election is already fixed for another internment of the junta
Masquerading as our government,
We genuflect between sexist and racist rants
That takes our focus off the chance
For real, lasting change that could positively affect
The next generation...
Four-thousand faces,
Human beings from divergent lives and various places
Their noble sacrifice
The blood on an arcane altar
to gods that take their spoils from our tax coffers
paid for by an economy faltering
[I fear: and I wish desperately to be wrong]
on the late, Great United States.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright
Please note: when I went to check the original source of the "news," the video has been removed from YouTube due to terms of usage violations. Yet curiously, every major news outlet has a copy and has run it ad nauseam. The Senator was grilled to repudiate, condemn and reject in no uncertain terms comments made by his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright. Obama's own comments cast doubt: it's not much of a prophesy to predict an army of journalist are pouring over every DVD of the Reverend Doctor's sermons to see a thin future presidential candidate in the midst as he delivers a stirring sermon in the tradition of "call and response."
History: "Call and response"
"In Sub-Saharan African cultures, call and response is a pervasive pattern of democratic participation -- in public gatherings in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental musical expression. It is this tradition that African bondsmen and women brought with them to the New World and which has been transmitted over the centuries in various forms of cultural expression -- in religious observance; public gatherings; sporting events; even in children's rhymes; and, most notably, in African-American music in its myriad forms and descendants including: gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and jazz extensions." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response_(music)
This tells me two things:
1. Most likely the church did not post this sermon. Out of the thousands of hours of sermons they could post that would not be so controversial, why post THIS one?
2. It is to the advantage of opponents of Obama's candidacy to run it.
Who are the opponents? They are legion:
- History;
- Ignorance;
- The source of the video.
I've read about the history of the black church since, most of my life I've attended one. I started with the Baptist Church, by far the oldest form of worship pattern in the New World. We were organized by masters into separate but hardly equal organizations.
Call and response stemmed from shear enthusiasm: Sunday was a day of rest from labor in the fields, and since we could not read - that would make us "uppity" and question authority, and since, like the history above it was something we brought from Africa, it has dominated our form of worship since. In contrast, evangelical pastors tend to speak in soft, lecture tones. Some can get fiery, I admit like: Jerry Farwell (deceased) - who said 9/11 was due to gays and lesbians, Rod Parsley - who advocates the destruction of Islam by the US and John Hagee - also not a friend of GLBT.
Many things we do in the black church stems from slavery, like: holding up one's finger to walk from one's seat. That meant you were asking permission from the overseer that observed your congregation. It made sure your "pastor" wasn't saying anything crazy like liberation, freedom, etc. Our ancestors made the coded 100s (no wikipedia on it) like "Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming forth to carry me home," itself a coded message for escape to the north to freedom.
The Azusa Street revival was lead by William J. Seymour, a pastor from Houston, Texas that took his revival and "speaking in tongues" to Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California 14 April 1906. It was the first time whites and blacks mingled worship together. The profound prejudice confounded the effort and people went back to their worship patterns.
In the 1930s, W. D. Fard established a new type of church in Chicago that would be inherited by Elijah Poole, a.k.a. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. They called for separation because they experienced separation. There is some evidence that the Klan invested in the church since their aims were quite... similar. The lack of teaching of black history, extensively researched by the sect would attract Malcolm Little, a.k.a. Detroit Red, a two-bit criminal that would be known as Malcolm X. He would attract a disciple from Winston-Salem Teacher's College, Louis Walcott now known as Louis Farrakhan. The same who would lead The Million Man March in Washington DC, 16 October 1995 with both Christian and Muslim brothers of color.
********************
It is the ignorance of this history that is quite interesting to watch unfold. That the magazine of the church (not the church) would give Louis Farrakhan an award - what award it escapes me, but enough to ruffle the establishment. That his sermons would stem from his experiences in a formerly segregated country as a former US Marine coming back from the Vietnam War. That such a man might attract followers that struggle to make a middle class lifestyle in a country that does not favor them, or predominately white liberal campuses where they feel "alien" according to Michelle Robinson's senior thesis at Princeton. That his sermons aren't much different than sermons I've heard in churches like his that developed under this rubric. The fact that I said the previous statements will get a reaction - probably from "anonymous" that I am again a racist. That is neither a broad brush on black pastors nor a labeling of African American Christians - just a statement of experiences.
On http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html it states "About 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute in 2002, the number of black men in prison has grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago. Today, more African-American men are in jail than in college. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college." 1980: that was my freshman year. Beyond statistics, those experiences might shape how we see things, how we view things and how we relay the gospel to each other in the nation’s most segregated hour.
********************
It's possible that someone released the video to YouTube, but it's doubtful without the church's permission. What's more possible is someone at the church that for whatever reason did not like Obama. Not some racist, but someone that looked like him and did not like his meteoric rise to possibly becoming the president. That person may or may not be a Hillary Clinton or John McCain supporter. The only description I can muster that best illustrates him or her is: crab. Crabs are boiled alive. The proverb is that they pull each other down below the steaming depths and all die together.
The candidates’ repudiate, reject, distain and respond to surrogates every week. The economy is in a shambles, the Iraq war is unpopular and cost 12 billion a month, gas is approach $4 and milk $5. I'm paying the same mortgage on 20% less of an income, and THIS is what I get from the First Amendment Media?
"Separation of church and state": what a NOVEL idea!
History: "Call and response"
"In Sub-Saharan African cultures, call and response is a pervasive pattern of democratic participation -- in public gatherings in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental musical expression. It is this tradition that African bondsmen and women brought with them to the New World and which has been transmitted over the centuries in various forms of cultural expression -- in religious observance; public gatherings; sporting events; even in children's rhymes; and, most notably, in African-American music in its myriad forms and descendants including: gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz and jazz extensions." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response_(music)
This tells me two things:
1. Most likely the church did not post this sermon. Out of the thousands of hours of sermons they could post that would not be so controversial, why post THIS one?
2. It is to the advantage of opponents of Obama's candidacy to run it.
Who are the opponents? They are legion:
- History;
- Ignorance;
- The source of the video.
I've read about the history of the black church since, most of my life I've attended one. I started with the Baptist Church, by far the oldest form of worship pattern in the New World. We were organized by masters into separate but hardly equal organizations.
Call and response stemmed from shear enthusiasm: Sunday was a day of rest from labor in the fields, and since we could not read - that would make us "uppity" and question authority, and since, like the history above it was something we brought from Africa, it has dominated our form of worship since. In contrast, evangelical pastors tend to speak in soft, lecture tones. Some can get fiery, I admit like: Jerry Farwell (deceased) - who said 9/11 was due to gays and lesbians, Rod Parsley - who advocates the destruction of Islam by the US and John Hagee - also not a friend of GLBT.
Many things we do in the black church stems from slavery, like: holding up one's finger to walk from one's seat. That meant you were asking permission from the overseer that observed your congregation. It made sure your "pastor" wasn't saying anything crazy like liberation, freedom, etc. Our ancestors made the coded 100s (no wikipedia on it) like "Swing low, sweet chariot. Coming forth to carry me home," itself a coded message for escape to the north to freedom.
The Azusa Street revival was lead by William J. Seymour, a pastor from Houston, Texas that took his revival and "speaking in tongues" to Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California 14 April 1906. It was the first time whites and blacks mingled worship together. The profound prejudice confounded the effort and people went back to their worship patterns.
In the 1930s, W. D. Fard established a new type of church in Chicago that would be inherited by Elijah Poole, a.k.a. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. They called for separation because they experienced separation. There is some evidence that the Klan invested in the church since their aims were quite... similar. The lack of teaching of black history, extensively researched by the sect would attract Malcolm Little, a.k.a. Detroit Red, a two-bit criminal that would be known as Malcolm X. He would attract a disciple from Winston-Salem Teacher's College, Louis Walcott now known as Louis Farrakhan. The same who would lead The Million Man March in Washington DC, 16 October 1995 with both Christian and Muslim brothers of color.
********************
It is the ignorance of this history that is quite interesting to watch unfold. That the magazine of the church (not the church) would give Louis Farrakhan an award - what award it escapes me, but enough to ruffle the establishment. That his sermons would stem from his experiences in a formerly segregated country as a former US Marine coming back from the Vietnam War. That such a man might attract followers that struggle to make a middle class lifestyle in a country that does not favor them, or predominately white liberal campuses where they feel "alien" according to Michelle Robinson's senior thesis at Princeton. That his sermons aren't much different than sermons I've heard in churches like his that developed under this rubric. The fact that I said the previous statements will get a reaction - probably from "anonymous" that I am again a racist. That is neither a broad brush on black pastors nor a labeling of African American Christians - just a statement of experiences.
On http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html it states "About 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute in 2002, the number of black men in prison has grown to five times the rate it was twenty years ago. Today, more African-American men are in jail than in college. In 2000 there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college." 1980: that was my freshman year. Beyond statistics, those experiences might shape how we see things, how we view things and how we relay the gospel to each other in the nation’s most segregated hour.
********************
It's possible that someone released the video to YouTube, but it's doubtful without the church's permission. What's more possible is someone at the church that for whatever reason did not like Obama. Not some racist, but someone that looked like him and did not like his meteoric rise to possibly becoming the president. That person may or may not be a Hillary Clinton or John McCain supporter. The only description I can muster that best illustrates him or her is: crab. Crabs are boiled alive. The proverb is that they pull each other down below the steaming depths and all die together.
The candidates’ repudiate, reject, distain and respond to surrogates every week. The economy is in a shambles, the Iraq war is unpopular and cost 12 billion a month, gas is approach $4 and milk $5. I'm paying the same mortgage on 20% less of an income, and THIS is what I get from the First Amendment Media?
"Separation of church and state": what a NOVEL idea!
Friday, March 07, 2008
Grandmother Poem
I've seen a lot this election cycle, and experienced a lot on this blog: the comment I replied to "anonymous" is one individual that thought I was a racist and that my culture has and has never had value. That challenge I could not leave hanging.
This is a commentary I wrote in the cubicle. I hope it speaks to what Africans in America/African Americans/Blacks/Negros go through on a daily basis. Our silence is not consent: we have mortgages and college tuition's to pay. So we leave our place of employment each day, our jowls tight and our blood pressures and sugar levels elevated. If you just had to say it, and you had the gift of spoken word, I think this is how you'd spit it. TGP
* * * * *
I sit in a cubicle
Surrounded by the descendants
That owned my ancestors
During this election season
My reasons for my choices are derided
I’d invite direct challenge, though I’d be chided for breaking a company edict that they flagrantly violate daily.
So, the issues are gaily bandied about me,
Subtly, without directly calling me
Delusional,
Feeling less human and more Labrador retriever
Sleeping silently, my stomach to the floor, my tail ready to wag before
Someone whistles.
A pious air of pedigree
Is their refusal after evidence abounds contrary
To the negative pictures they mentally filter to review any news of me.
CNN did a special: “26 Hours of Terror” when a brother went crazy and shot up downtown ATL…
For the other brother who risked his life to rescue the four children of another man and his wife from a fire – he said he was a dad too, and wouldn’t want anyone to leave his children to house fires hotter than hell – he got a one-time, five-minute sound bite.
I want to hug my grandmother basking in the morning sunshine of the village of my beginnings.
I want to smell the air, taste the dew unmarred by middle passages, only the smog of so-called modernization that mars even Eden.
I want to see you dance a welcome [to me] in a pink tribal dashiki as I, the prodigal son walk, trot then run to your greeting.
I want to hug my grandmother and feel the grip of her embrace as she communicates the spirits of my ancestors in each breath sigh, each tearful cry I shed.
Shush, Hon!
I have been gone long, grandmother:
My father married and divorced my mother.
At one time I was called mulatto, now I mark “other”
As I take a census of my history
A mystery that I had to solve that eventually led me to you and this embrace.
My father voluntarily journeyed to a distant place,
And did not speak over me his blessings,
Or tell me who I was
As the quiver of his loins
He was little more than a ghost to me
Before his earthly demise
We corresponded via letters now known as snail-mail
And so, through sorcery and liquors, I tried to escape
And disguise
The responsibility of my lineage
Taking psychedelic trips did little to alleviate the derision seen when I hailed a cab, got on an elevator, furrowed my brow, combed my hair, shaved my head, inhaled – flaring my nostrils, pursed my lips, or wore a turban from my father’s tribe.
When I express my negritude, I am chided as a racist.
When my church celebrates its heritage, they are scolded as separatist.
When I express any views that are contrary to the control of the ancestors of former oppressors, I am a black nationalist (or terrorist).
Comments from anonymous in Cyberspace ridicule the age wrinkles of wisdom on your beautiful face and my own as “gorilla,” evidence that some of us have yet to evolve from Neanderthal separatists thought processes.
What began as “hope” perhaps is hopeless since the word “America” can be rearranged into three distinct that describe this country’s characteristics: “I am race.”
I want to hug you grandmother, basking in the morning sunshine of the village of my beginnings.
I want to run down streets owned by my people since time began in Eden, like the children I see, for a childhood not experienced in Indonesia or Hawaii playing soccer and hopscotch, double-dutch with lollipops as your prodigal grandson.
I need the strength of my Faith, my people and origins as I am in a contest with others like me who side against me,
Cultivating the seeds of their own destruction in the process,
As I am in a contest that most suspect rigged – for or against me anyway,
And that most after wards will not denigrate their intelligence with participation.
I want to hug you, grandmother and feel the grip of your embrace as you communicate the spirits of my ancestors
I need to hear from our village Griot their whispers from long ago and their assurance that this Goliath will also fall to the stones of my truth.
Shush, Hon! It’s going to be alright. Grandmother’s here… embracing you.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Open Letter to Anonymous
Dear sir or madam:
I'm afraid www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions is the type of web site that is constructed to appease one's brused ego.
The web sites I'd refer you to are the following:
http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/Famous_Black_Inventors.htm
http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/history.html
Also, look at the following:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
I can find patent 147,363 dated February 10, 1874 belonging to:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllatimer.htm
I found the patent search tool, sir or madam, from your web site's bibliography.
It's interesting and sad: I typically don't get responses to my postings. However, I take umbrage to being called a racist. In my experience, racism takes a certain amount of authority and power, like the kind that hung my grandfather for the crime of being a teacher: it seems reading was a criminal, revolutionary act in South Carolina at the time. You should try it sometimes.
The fact of history is that it has always been written by the victors. You may have your opinions sir or madam and I may have mine. This is after all, a country of laws, not of men. And the law we both have access to as Americans is the First Amendment.
Sincerely non racist,
The Griot Poet
I'm afraid www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions is the type of web site that is constructed to appease one's brused ego.
The web sites I'd refer you to are the following:
http://inventors.about.com/od/blackinventors/Famous_Black_Inventors.htm
http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/history.html
Also, look at the following:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
I can find patent 147,363 dated February 10, 1874 belonging to:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllatimer.htm
I found the patent search tool, sir or madam, from your web site's bibliography.
It's interesting and sad: I typically don't get responses to my postings. However, I take umbrage to being called a racist. In my experience, racism takes a certain amount of authority and power, like the kind that hung my grandfather for the crime of being a teacher: it seems reading was a criminal, revolutionary act in South Carolina at the time. You should try it sometimes.
The fact of history is that it has always been written by the victors. You may have your opinions sir or madam and I may have mine. This is after all, a country of laws, not of men. And the law we both have access to as Americans is the First Amendment.
Sincerely non racist,
The Griot Poet
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