Pipe Dream

I have a dream.   
I have a dream that one day I will… 
I have a dream that one day we all will…
I had a dream.    -then I woke up only to realize that “one day” ain’t never today.

1Day != 2Day
Stop pipe-dreamin’.

-Lazarus

Where’s Wifey? – Part Two: Excuses and Contradictions

Where’s Wifey? – Part Two:  Excuses and Contradictions 

Excuses are employed by Black males when challenged to take on this responsibility.  One that I was really surprised to hear was:  ”[I'm] not going to just marry some woman that hears her clock ticking after her best years were spent on her back.”

This excuse illustrates my point exactly!  On her back with who?, I ask.  Take responsibility that she’s spending the best years with YOU. (not you per se… YOU/ME/WE collectively). Why do we allow this to happen?  Oh, it is all HER fault, right?…

Another excuse, “We don’t set the standard for women.”

Herein, lies the problem.  Are we willing to accept this dysfunction and simply point the finger at the women? That’s weak!.. However, it is symptomatic;  illustrating how Black males have been marginalized to the point where they now believe that they do not have any control over their interaction with their own woman.  Examine ourstory and you’ll find that we set the standards for each other.

Again, I’m not trying to remove the burden entirely from women. I simply refuse to place it solely on women. It is a shared responsibility.

Here’s where the conversation typically turns into circular debate.  The commonly held position is that if Black women demanded more of Black men, then they would be more willing to commit to them. right?…

I counter that point by stating… WE SHOULD DEMAND MORE OUT OF OURSELVES.

Furthermore, the lame Black males’ conversations on about his feelings about his women are usually laced with insane contradictions.

I had a conversation with a self-described “playa”  who said, “I never commit myself to them I tell them in the door what I am on.” …then a later in the same conversation he further states, “Yet so many women have been tainted into thinking that most men are dogs.”

First, does he think that he is the only one who runs that line?  Second, do you think he’s even considered that it is him (and those like him) that are doing the “tainting”?

One day, he’ll find himself ready to marry.  And when that day comes he’ll be selecting from a pool of women that he(we) have tainted.  This, in turn, provides the rationale the Black male needs openly to seek “wifey” candidates outside his community.

Somehow, his woman is good enough to father his children, but somehow not quite good enough to marry.

Let me see if I can address this from another angle.

Would you let your daughter deal with the likes of you? (you – a self described playa who refuses to commit and is so self-centered that you think your imminent betrayal is alright since you told her from the beginning.)

If the answer is “no”, then understand that the same way you want to protect your daughter from predators is the same way you want to protect ALL your women. This is whether you feel they are grown enough to make decisions for themselves or not.

“I am We”…. we should look at all our women as the mothers, daughters and wives of our community.

The emotional damage that the Black male complains about doesn’t simply come from a man who has been unfaithful within a committed relationship. It also is derived from men who are simply looking for a bed-partner. So, although, you may be honest, in her mind, “you(we) are a dog”. (Keeping mind that doesn’t make you less desirable at the moment and a “dog” might just what she’s seeking.)   The consequences are you’ve contributed to her belief, bolstered her independence and regulated yourself to where she’ll only needs you for ONE thing.

That’s not her fault.  It’s yours.

-Lazarus

Where’s Wifey?

I’m tired of hearing the Black male complain about the problems with his Black woman. The problem is that we have been prodigal with our resources. He has extended his sexual adolescence into his mid-thirties by refusing to commit. He has boosted his fragile ego by the quantity of his sexual conquests. What is between his legs has become the measure of his manhood.  Finally, when the lame Black male is ready to start a family, he is audacious enough to complain that his own women have too many problems.  Somehow, now, he is the one who is growing impatient?   The emotional baggage he’s not man enough to deal with, is in many cases given to them by us!  We cannot continue to collectively, “dog-out” our women and then turn around and complain that there is shortage of “wifey” material.

We have to change our collective mindset.

“Where’s Wifey?”, you may ask. …Well, Wifey got a “three-piece” and absent father(s) to her children. You missed your opportunity to make her your Queen!  We are squandering our most precious resource. She’s surviving without you. She doesn’t trust you. She believes she doesn’t need you.

You can be a man and work hard regain that trust or you can walk away. Which will it be?…When discussing this issue with Black males, I here often hear the same excuses.  I hear statements like

” I can see if the majority of women were good, wifey material, but that’s not the case. I know good brothas that just don’t want to settle down with some club hoppin’ tramp, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I contend that it is the collective behavior of us men that creates a disproportionate amount of, as you put it, “club hoppin’ tramps”. (And let’s be real, you ain’t looking for wifey in the club anyway.) The point I’m trying to make is that the if “so-called good brother looking to settle down” examined his past and present behavior (post adolescence) he may find that he (and/or his peers) have contributed to the emotional wreckage of the potential “wifey” pool. -Cause and Effect.

Furthermore, I want to make clear that the spirit of this essay is not to point to the shortage of “good” Black women. (because I do not believe that is the case.) I’m placing the defense, honor, and protection of our women in the collective hands of the Black man.

Consider that this weekend’s one-night stand, could be someone’s future wife.

We should be actively seeking our complement and not our next conquest.

The Black family is in crisis.  The tragic consequence of this mentality is that we are no longer building strong family units. The strength of a people can be measured by the strength of its families. When we speak of our nation, we must understand that the family is a microcosm of the macrocosm.

“Destroy families and you destroy the nation; build strong families and you build a strong nation.” – Ashanti proverb

The goal of “… having all the sex you want… with as many different women you want….” is expected behavior from adolescent MALES. It is selfish and myopic!  GROW-UP!

Not willing to be(or not being able to be) responsible for anyone except yourself is not what our community needs of its MEN.

We speak of manhood, but I think we have an ill-formed definition. A MAN does not have be offered incentives to recognize and accept his responsibilities.

Are we so emasculated that it is a commonly held belief that we are not NEEDED? Just because Black women have/are relying on themselves does not excuse Black men from their responsibilities as her complement. (Utengano) The Black woman has been in survival-mode for centuries and has been the backbone of the family unit because the Black man has been under constant physical and sociopolitical attack. She is looking for the return of the functional Black man to his role within the family unit. How many more generations can we afford to go without him?  It is a shame that Black women are being raised to believe that they must be her own self-contained support system.  It is a shame that so-called Black men see this strength and interpret it as a pardon for his responsibilities. (“My Mama raised me by herself…” is a common rationalization.)

My plea:  Be a MAN and recognize and accept your responsibility to your nation, to your woman, to your children(born or unborn).  It is not acceptable for so-called men to continue to amass sexual conquests long past adolescence; to be busy pacifying the ego while at the same time, eroding the trust of their complement.

Of course, women bear some of the responsibility; however this is addressed to YOU, Black male.

Yes, of course, “It takes two to Tango”. However, (building off of that Euro-centric cliché) as conscious Black people, we need to start dancing a DIFFERENT DANCE altogether.

The cycle must be broken and reversed.  -And it begins with the Black MAN.

-Lazarus

Nationbuilding

Nationbuilding- the conscious and focused application of our people’s collective resources, energies, and knowledge to the task of liberating and developing the psychic and physical space that we identify as ours.Nationbuilding involves the development of behaviors, values, languages, institutions, and physical structures that elucidate our history and culture, concretize and protect the present and insure the future identity and independence of the nation. Nationbuilding is the deliberate, keenly directed and focused, and energetic projection of the national culture, and the collective identity.

-Kwame Agyei Akoto
Nationbuilding: Theory & Practice in Afrikan Center Education. Washingtion, D.C.: Pan Afrikan World Institute, 1992, p.3

The Educator

  “…an educator is a learning, growing person who has a responsibility to continuing her own growth, those she is entrusted to teach and the development of her society. All this is placed within the context of her mission to transmit the skills that can support the continuation of her culture.”

-Nah Dove
“Understanding Education for Cultural Affirmation”

Jegna

Jegna is an Ethiopian (Amharic) word that means “a very brave person who is a protector of a culture, the rights of his or her people and their land.”

A jegna is more than a “leader.” She or he is someone who is not afraid to speak truth to power, is uncompromised, full of integrity and at the very core of his or her being sees the welfare and protection of their people as paramount. They are literally prepared to die for the community they represent.

It refers to those who are altruistically commited, out of an unqualified duty to their people and nation, to teach our children the art an science of a politically concscious adulthood.

Jegna (Jenoch, plural form) are those special people who have (1) been tested in struggle or battle (2) demonstrated extraordinary and unusual fearlessness, (3) shown determination and courage in protecting her/her peoples, land and culture, (4) shown diligence and dedication to our people, (5) produced an exceptionally high quality of work, and (6) have dedicated themselves to the protection, defense, nurturance and developement of our young by advancing our people. place, and culture.

-Wade W. Nobles (“From Na Ezaleli to the Jenoch”)

 …

Note:  When honoring these Afrikan individuals, jegna should be used instead of mentor because Mentor is derived from the mythical Greek character Mentor who Odysseus left to care for and educate his son Telemachus in his absence. As with every other “mentor” in ancient Greek society, a significant part of his role as a teacher and guardian was to personally introduce his ward to a homosexual sexstyle.

-Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti

Can African People Save Themselves?

Can African People Save Themselves?
By John Henrik Clarke

The question can be answered in many ways, in both the negative and the positive. I have chosen to answer it in the positive, because I am an African person and I have hope for a commitment to every African on the face of the earth. My commitment to mankind comes through African people. If African people are to save themselves, they must first know themselves. They must first know where they have been and what they have been, where they are, and the significance of what they are.By knowing this, they will get some idea of what they still must be. African people must stop being the market and the dumping ground for shoddy consumer goods of other people. We must, on an international basis, begin to produce the things we wear, the food we eat, the cars we drive, and then train our children to follow our footsteps and complete the mission. The mission will be to be a self-sustained and contained people. At least a third of the Africans in the world can be employed providing goods and services for other Africans.

Once we create an internal economic system, we can relate to any external economic system in the world. No African State can be truly independent when it does not produce the bread it eats nor the safety pin that holds a child’s diaper together. No nation can call itself free and self-sustaining when it must order its toilet paper from another nation. Africans must begin to produce every item essential to their survival.

Education must be geared to produce the large number of technically trained Africans needed for this task, and the trained must in turn produce other Africans to replace them. No African nation in the world should beg for the skills of another nation or people to sustain itself.Africans can save themselves by having the will to do so until the job of self-protection and true independence has been achieved. The salvation of Africa by African people will contribute to the peace and the salvation of the world. This salvation should be the mission of every African on the face of the earth. The completion of the mission and the benefits that will accrue from it will be the legacy that African people can leave for the whole world.
…(emphasis added)

Medase pa to Dr. Clarke for the plan.

A better question…  Will Afrikan People Save Themselves?

-Lazarus

Trust

Yes, us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must trust us discuss trusting us
Us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must trust us discuss thus trusting us
Trusting us, us must trust discuss
Discuss not trusting us must not fuss
Us with us means us discussing trusting us
Us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must discuss trusting us

-  KRS-One

Obenyn

Here are some related terms. Asafo Nyansafo(Akan) means “wise person who is also a warrior.” Obenyn means “warriorhood”.

Medase pa to Obadele Kambon for these concepts.

I’ve listed some characteristic/behaviors that I’ve learned about Obenyn.

Medase pa to Mwalimu Baruti for teaching this in his book, Asafo: A Warrior’s Guide to Manhood

Please consider the following(at least) before self-appointing yourself as a member of the warrior-class.

• An Afrikan warrior scholar refuses to be at peace with anything less than the total liberation of his people.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar daily affirms that “I am an Afrikan warrior, a warrior scholar. I refuse to be at peace with anything less.”
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is culturally and politically a PanAfrikan nationalist.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar an educator, not a teacher.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a doer, a nationbulider, a maker of his people’s way.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a nonintellectual in that he practically applies his knowledge. He does not see war waged in some debate, whether great of small.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar does not pass on his miseducation. He corrects it. He educates himself so that he can teach an ancient Afrikan truth.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar unconditionally respects Afrikan women. He is their defender, their lover, their divine complement.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is an entrepereneur. He distngusihes wealth from income and power from influence.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar pursues empowerment, not subintegration.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a perimeter defender. He is the first line of defense for our people, for our most valuable resourses, our elders, women and children.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar words cut deep and clean. No one leaves with doubt as to his intent.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar protects his daughters from misguided sons and sons from confused peers.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is determined to challenge any and every hostile affront to his culture, ourstory and people, no matter the consequences.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar understands that we are at war and acts accordingly.

….

Peace and Medase,
Lazarus

Unjust Enrichment

Unjust Enrichment – The concept of circumstances which give rise to the obligation of restitution, that is, the receiving and retention of property, money, or benefits which in justice and equity belong to another.

Many are familiar with this term/concept.  However, what many do not consider, is the flip-side of unjust enrichment, undeserved impoverishment.

(consider the following excerpt…)

Consider four young children coming into the American colonies in the late seventeenth century. An African brother and sister are ripped from their homes and imported in chains into Virginia, the largest slaveholding colony. Their African name being ignored, they are renamed “negro John” and “negro Mary” (no last name) by the white family that purchased them from a slave ship. The white (Smith) family has young twins, William and Priscilla. Their first names were given to them by their parents, and they never wore chains. The enslaved children are seen as “black” by the Smith family, while the twins will live as white.What do these children and their descendants have to look forward to? Their experiences will be very different as a result of the system of racist oppression. William and Priscilla’s lives may be hard because of the physical environment, but they and their descendants will likely build lives with an array of personal choices and the passing down of significant social resources. As a girl and later as a woman, Priscilla will not have the same privileges as William, but her life is more likely to be economically supported and protected than Mary’s. Indeed John and Mary face a stark, often violent existence, with most of their lives determined by the whims of the slaveholder, who has stolen not only their labor but their lives. They will never see the families or homes societies again. They can be radically separated at any time, a separation much less likely for William and Priscilla. From their and other slaves’ labor some wealth will be generated for the Smith family and passed on to later generations. Unlike the white twins, John and Mary will not be allowed to read or write and will be forced to replace their African language with English. Where they eat and sleep will be largely determined by whites. As they grow older, major decisions about their personal and family relationships will be made by whites. Mary will face repeated sexual threats, coercion, and rape at the hands of male overseers and slaveholders, perhaps including William. Moreover, if John even looks at Priscilla the wrong way, he is likely to be punished severely.

If John and Mary are later allowed to have spouses and children they will face a much greater infant mortality rate than whites. And their surviving children may well be taken from them, so that they and later generations may have a great difficulty in keeping the full memory of their ancestors, a problem not faced by William and Priscilla. If John or Mary resist their oppression, they are likely to be whipped, put in chains, or have an iron bit put in their mouths. If John is rebellious or runs away too much, he may face castration. John and Mary will have to struggle very hard to keep their families together because the slaveholders can destroy them at any moment. Still, together with other Black Americans, they build a culture of resistance carried from generation to generation in oral traditions. Moreover, for many more generations John’s and Mary’s descendants will suffer similarly severe conditions as the property of white families. Few if any of their descendants will see freedom until the 1860’s.

The end of slavery does not end the large-scale oppression faced by John’s and Mary’s descendants. For four more generations after 1865 the near-slavery called legal or de facto segregation will confront them, but of course will not affect the descendants of William and Priscilla Smith. The later black generations will also be unable to build up resources and wealth; they will have their lives substantially determined by the white enforcers of comprehensive segregation. Where they can get a job, where they can live, whether and where they can go to school and who they can travel will significantly determined by whites. Some may face brutal beatings or lynchings by whites, especially if they resist oppression. They will have inherited no wealth from many generations of enslaved ancestors, and they are unlikely to garner resources themselves to pass along to later generations. From the late 1600s to the 1960s, John and Mary and their descendants have been at an extreme economic, political, and social disadvantage compared to William and Priscilla Smith and their descendants. The lives of these black Americans have been shortened, their opportunities severely limited, their inherited resources all but nonexistent, and their families pressured by generations of well-organized racial oppression.

The desegregation era of the 1960s may renew hopes for major changes in the system of racism. But the changes bear a great price. For example, the parents of young black children will be forced to watch them spit upon by howling mobs of whites seeking to stop school desegregation. Since the civil rights movement forced and end to legal segregation in the 1960s, John’s and Mary’s descendants have had more opportunity to control their lives and to garner some socioeconomic resources. Yet they have faced large-scale discrimination in employment, housing, and most other arenas of U>S> society because the 1960s’ civil rights laws are largely unenforced. The descendants of William and Priscilla Smith have not faced such discrimination, nor have the many whites whose families came into the nation after the end of slavery or legal segregation. Over the many generations since the late 1600s, John’s and Mary’s descendants have usually been unable to build up the economic, educational, and cultural resources necessary to compete effectively with white individuals and the greater socioeconomic resources they typically enjoy. Most of William and Priscilla Smith’s descendants, as the beneficiaries of the oppression of John and Mary’s descendants, have more or less prospered.

From this vignette we can begin to see how racism is economically and systematically constructed. Unjust impoverishment for John and Mary and undeserved enrichment for William and Priscilla become bequeathed inheritances for many later generations. Undeserved impoverishment and enrichment are at the heart of colonial land theft and the brutal slave system. Over time this ill-gotten gain has been used to construct a prosperous white-dominated nation. Today there is a general denial in the white population that black Americans have contributed much to American (or Western) development and civilization. This denial is part of contemporary white racist misunderstandings of the reality of the history of the West. However, the facts are clear: The slavery system provided much stimulus for economic development and generated critical surplus capital for the new nation. Without the enslaved labor of millions of black Americans, there might well not be a prosperous United States today.

-Racist America, Joe R. Feagin

(emphasis added)

-Lazarus