Seems nobody really gives a shit about Democracy in this supposed Democracy. When Genocide Joe said, when running in 2019 that, “Nothing will fundamentally change”— he meant it. All you need do is look at your lives now, versus then, despite what Dr. Jill and The View sycophants have to say:
(From YouTube)
I’m tired of the duopoly, Fam — and you should be too. We’ve NEVER taken advantage of the opportunity to kick their asses to the curb and try something new. But I really believe we have that chance with Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. Please take a listen:
All of you “Uncommitted” voters should consider how much change you can make (you’ve already seen how much you’ve rocked the Democrats in their certainty). Take a chance onsomething different and new. I’m right there with you.
While I’ve been trying to comment as much as I can on folks’ writing that matter a lot to me, I’ve not beenwriting— so much so that I have little, toNO $tat$! That’s okay with me though, cuz I don’t write here for the money. Ido it because I wanna engage with other folk, as well as share shit.This short post is about the latter
On March 12, I had a seizure. Who knew??!! I surely damned didn’t (not for the first time, I was bamboozled, by the not knowing — let me tell you!). And while that shit was, and still is fuck*n with my damned head, I am SO, SO eternally grateful for the man with whom I chose to share my life for the last, 42 years.
He plays golf every Thursday in a golf league, created with a bunch of old, retired guys just like himself (bless their hearts, they’ve made little signs, shirts and hats with their league name and logo on them and everthing!) — most of them, Mexican born and bred in San Antonio, share the real, Cesar-Chavez history of the city. He, in turn, respectfully and joyfully shares that knowledge with us — like what high schools were the shit in sports when they grew up, or what used to be there, but’s no longer (gentrification and gerrymandering’s everywhere, Fam). But I think what’s brought them the closest, isn’t only their prior military shit, it’s become the fact that one of his owns’ daughter was the partner of Brian Sicknick, an officer killed in the January 6th storming of the Capitol.
And on the first Thursday after my seizure, this is what he wrote:
(My Darlin’s love for me)
We fell in love 42 years ago, to Minnie’s “Lovin’’ You,” — it’s been the soundtrack of our lives for all of our lives. After the damned seizure, we were trying to figure out how our old asses could just keep livin’ life — on our own terms. I promised to take the anti-seizure medicine as prescribed (cuz he knows how much I fuck*n hate pills, until I do enough research along with my neuro f/u consult on that shit to really understand what the hell’s going on), and that Mofo bought some cameras — one aimed at my seat at the laptop in the dining room, and the other aimed at the bed cuz he knows I sleep late, so he can keep doing his golf shit (gets on my damned nerves sometimes when I’m sleepin’ late and hear his ass yellin’ at me at the top of his lungs, “Hey, you hear me??!” Yeah, Mofo, I do — I’m still fuck*n’ SLEEPIN’!!
Wake-up calls really are a thing, Fam — we ain’t runnin’ SHIT!!
The Professor, @William Spivey, at Medium.com wrote a helluva piece on Isaac Woodard here, Fam. Please do read it! It’ll help you understand what came after that brutal beating.
Watch this PBS movie about Mr. Woodard — “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard,” — it expires 2/28, so hurry up! If you read this later than that, you can see it here on YouTube with an interesting discussion as well:
My mother’s best friend — Miss Dora — worked for the Waring family as a “domestic” for a large part of her life and mine. As a matter of fact, I think she still works for them off and on, on occasion. I remember finallywatching “The Help,” and after Viola Davis saying she’d not liked playing the part of Abilene, I was more than a little warm about that shit — just cuz I saw and grew up with Black women who did this work, that were heretofore a soft place to land for many of our families — both Black and white (hell, Ms. Dora put four kids through HBCUs on that shit!).
Here’s an interesting further discussion…(interesting how throwing around that whole racial reckoning bullshit, but not meaning a damned thing about it, produces not a damned thing, no?)
Thurgood was the Ben Crump of his day — I’m so damned happy he was!
If we continue to listen to the propaganda of the presstitute media, we, in the West — will continue to suck in, and then parrot the untruths they spew. Here, we get another side of the story:
Our government is FULLY supporting a Nazi regime in Ukraine, Family. And while Jews here condemn Kanye West and Kyrie Irving as the worst of the worst anti-Semites — they avert their eyes and support, the worst anti-Semites in their history and their present. Hypocrites all!
Western media keeps braying, “There are no Nazis in Ukraine!” They say it’s impossible because Zelensky is a Jew — miss me with that bullshit! There’s so much evidence to the contrary, if one really wants to know. So why don’t they want to know the truth? Because if they faced it, they’d have to admit the gazillions of dollars and weapons the U.S. government and its allies have, and continue to funnel into Ukraine — is in support of everything they claim to stand against. They’d have to admit all their performative bullshit against the Neo-nazis here in this country is just that — bullshit.
And given how the U.S. treated Jews seeking asylum after World War II, I really don’t see why they’re perpetrating this fraud. What I think I do see, is why the Jews in our government go along with this shit. All I can think is, “Revenge is a dish best served, cold.” Too conspiratorial? Maybe. But you need to explain to me why they’re thumpin’ these non-powerful Black guys, all while powerful America’s supporting folk who killed their ancestors and their progeny.
Prescient, is all I can say about this man whose voice thundered over the propaganda machine that was, and still is our presstitute media. That’s why they murdered him.
“When we think scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men."
He sure didn’t lie there! Even though he was talking about Vietnam, it still applies up to, and including today. Look at how those “misguided men,” leaning on “scientific power” lied this country into Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine.
I see no signs of them, or things changing unless we the people make it so.
Maybe I’m just an old-head but, Chi-i-i-le, I’m sitting here listening to this, “We-didn’t-want-your-ass-for-15-ballots" Kevin McCarthy — giving his damned acceptance speech as Speaker of the House of Representatives. I’m just shakin’ my damned head, Fam.
Some folk have no shame. Does he not realize that we ALL watched (well, us old, retired folk with nothing else to do, at least) — this dog-n-pony show going on? What was it for? To get to this? To get to you??!!
What a f*ckin’ performance. From Hakeem Jeffries’ wanna-come-off-like-Obama, self-serving nod to Pelosi (under the guise of his, “Here I am for 2028, folks!), to Kevin’s, George Washington crossing the Delaware, Abe Lincoln diatribe and then rounding it up with the family — nothin’ but performance.
We’re pawns, Fam — pawns in both their performative games of power. All that rote, patriotic bullshit is just that — bullshit. Unless and until we use what little power we have left to get rid of these performers, there’ll be more little Kevins, or Obamas, whichever comes first (and it’ll be either/or — since there’s only TWO parties).
Wish I could say I’m surprised HIS second chance mattered, but others’ do not — but I can’t.
He talks about being faced with being literally “at death’s door.” He talks about the lessons he learned to apply to all of his life — “the lessons of perseverance and never, ever, giving up.” He also talks a good game about how “our lives aren’t defined by our challenges, but how we respond to those challenges.”
Greg, all of that shit sounds real good when you’re running for office and trying to bullshit “we the people,” (you did get some of them — hook, line and sinker though). Apparently, you seem to think only white folk have those feelings, those desires; that the immigrants at the border don’t feel those same feelings. Has it ever occurred to you that, that is the damned reason they KEEP COMING?? That their “perseverance and never, ever giving up” is what drives them, just like you???
And while you and your wife adopted your daughter, Audrey, who you say brought you so much joy when they handed her to you first, and since — have you ever thought about the women who felt that same joy the minute they actually, physically gave birth to their children, after having carried and delivered them into de facto captivity? How about their daddies, who never got to feel that same joy you felt — at all. Lucky, Audrey is all you got to say about that, I guess.
“Tio Greg,” as one of your nieces called you in one of your patronizing-as-hayell, election ads in Texas — you ain’t shit. You sent three busloads of HUMAN BEINGS into the freezing cold of Washington, DC, with neither warm clothes, nor prior notice — in a dick-measuring contest??!! You.ain’t.shit!
I don’t believe in white Jesus, but I do believe in karma. And that second chance you got that your supposedly-Christian ass keeps ignoring and refusing to pay forward — will catch up to you and not in a good way. I just hope I’m alive to see it.
Family, while the Supremes marinate on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), I want to share how this young, Sister is s-o-o-o-o f*ckin’ on point about what this is really about. Please listen, enjoy and understand why Brackeen v. Haaland is white supremacy’s latest attempt at killing the “Indian,” and most importantly — why.
This past May, four days after I watched my beautiful sister-in-law dying, I took a break from the family mourning and went back to the hotel room, clicking through the channels looking for something to take my mind off what I was feeling. Luckily, I witnessed Deb Haaland on CSPAN, telling of another trauma long ignored, not only in this country, but wherever else white savages reigned (yeah I called y’alls ass the SAVAGES for a change!, cuz that’s what the hell you were and many of you STILL ARE). And painful as it was to hear, I felt so damned PROUD of this Warrior Woman — speaking truth to power and STANDING UP for her people (unlike you, Barry). Do listen Family, as she shows what a REAL leader looks like:
And yes, I am more than well aware of the fact that, Native Americans also enslaved Africans. All I have to say about that is, when you’re taught to punch down — you do.
This, is a serious nit I need to pick, more with my Black Fam than white folk (since stealing and distorting our culture often, and even with our help, is the norm — especially these days). But you guys? You non-boulé folk who’ve not been compromised? SOME of you should know, or at least learn better. And the rest of y’all boulé folk — cut this shit out!
“Come By Ya” (in the Gullah patois of my birth) is in NO WAY a feel-good, folk “camp song” born of some African language (well it wasn’t until white folk chose to steal and rework it that way, that is) — nor is it this JOKE of a touchy-feely, white misappropriation they like to throw around, based on their own white fuckery.
“Come By Ya” was a F*CKIN’ LAMENT of the enslaved Black folk of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands. It was a pained entreaty, a cry for help — TO.WHITE.JESUS (with whom they’d been deeply indoctrinated) — for spiritual, physical and emotional rescue, from the HORRORS inflicted upon them by those same Bible-thumpin’, so-called Christian, white folk, who’d brought them to Him in the first place!
I’m here to tell you Fam — indoctrination soaked in naked terror really works!
I was born and raised in Charleston, SC 66 seasons ago. My family are Gullah people born & raised on Edisto Island, a Sea Island not far from the city proper. My maternal grandmother and grandfather were born in 1908 and 1913 respectively. And from her Black Methodist church, to his Black Baptist church, I learned this old, Negro spiritual at both their knees, led by the oldest member of the congregation — my entire, damned life!
The last time I heard and sang it, was at my younger, first cousin, Rhonda’s funeral in January 2018. Held at my grandfather’s church on the Island (at which Mother Emanuel’s new pastor, Rev. Eric C.S. Manning spoke), it was appropriately, the Benediction selection because at that moment, we were all “singin’, cryin’ and needin’ rescue and relief from the pain her death wrought. I remember thinking to myself, “These damed folk, with no damned knowledge of how we, the descendants of formerly enslaved people lived and believed, had bastardized something that for us, meant a soothing — a Balm in Gilead.”
I’ve long since stopped believing in white Jesus but, I’ll NEVER stop loving those spirituals that, over my lifetime, have always made me feel whole and connected to my people.
As usual though, white folk keep trying to take credit for “discovering it” (like that lost-assed Christopher Columbus) or in fact, writing it. From the Library of Congress (please do click on the player and listen to the 1926 song, sung by Henry Wylie of Darien, GA of McIntosh County) and as you read, notice where this white guy claims he got this from):
Kumbaya: History of an Old Song
I am so sick and damned tired of white folk’s first, appropriation, then misappropriation of something that means the world to me. And worse, I’m equally sick and tired of supposedly “educated” Black folk using “Kumbaya” in the same way! Our stories and voices have long been stolen and used to fit the white gaze, so much so that even Black folk don’t have a damned clue of the origins of the words they speak, let alone their meanings and their history— even though we should! But, as Zora taught, “All my skinfolk ain’t my kinfolk.”
Since the days of slavery, White supremacy hates the not-knowing (which is why the MAGA folk always blow their tops when they hear someone speaking a language they don’t know). And while it’s mostly true the slavers erased our languages and forbade us to speak them, they were sh*t out of luck when it came to my Gullah/Geechee people of the Sea Islands of SC and GA. And because they were SOL, we had Harriett Tubman, Denmark Vesey and The Stono Rebellion just to name a few. But they’re hip to it now and, as usual, under the guise of “helping” (that whole “White Savior” thing) they’ve got a plan to make sure it never happens again. Hell, even Yale’s got their fingers in the Gullah honeypot!
First, I watched as my beautiful, sister-in-law lost her battle with metastatic kidney cancer in Upstate New York after she left the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where her older sister lived and she'd been being treated for almost a year. She was 70, and died on Mother's Day, a day after her baby brother's (my husband's) 68th birthday.
From April 28, when we arrived at her Upstate, NY home from Texas (the family’d decided we’d all take turns being there cuz she couldn’t really do anything for herself and her husband was undone), we were relieving her twin brother who’d been there for a week.
I've never been in the house with someone dying. That shit f*ked me the hell up, Fam. But something I think we Black folk are conditioned to do -- is love folk up as they "go through it." I massaged her legs and when her older sister, Joyce, asked her if she wanted us to say the rosary with her -- she said, "Yes, please."
And damned if that Jesuit-indoctrinated, Oblate Sisters of Providence shit didn't come right back to me! I said the rosary with Joy & Caroline (her daughter), despite what I think about Catholic indoctrination -- cuz that's what I'm sure Jan would've wanted..
When I realized that on May 21 — a white, 18 year-old , killed 10 Black folk buyin’ damned groceries and injured three in the May 14 Buffalo mass shootingjust four hours away from where we’d been, I lost my f*ckin’ mind.
Then, on May 24, by the time we got home, 19 Latino children and two teachers were massacred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde by another white, 18 year-old for a total of 30 people dead in nearly as many days as had the month of May! Fam, I'm really undone.
I’m always there it seems, or in close proximity to this sh*t. I was living in Charleston when Michael Slager killed Walter Scottand when the Emanuel 9 were murdered by Dylan Roof; I was in Minnesota after George Floyd was murdered, not far away from Kenosha, WI when Jacob Blake was murdered. I was living in South Texas when the El Paso massacre happened. It’s startin’ to creep me the hell out, Fam!
Like Judge Thurgood Marshall before her, we have an American Descendant of Slavery (ADOS) who's not ashamed of that fact -- SITTING ON THE HIGHEST COURT IN THE LAND! And no, Clarence Thomas doesn't share in those honorifics because though he is ADOS from Pinpoint, GA -- he's apparently ashamed of that, given his disrespect for Black women like Anita Hill, his rigidly conservative views and rulings on cases that come before him involving not only us, but other people of color. {SMDH}
I'll be adding SCOTUSBlog to my list of blogs to follow just so I can keep up with what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is doing. And, good or bad -- I will have thoughts!
Family, please listen as Professor Mearsheimer lays out the whys and wherefores regarding what's happening in Ukraine today for a clear picture of how we got to this point and suggestions on how we help end it:
My last post was about Derrick Bell. But I had to share this testimony, out-of-the-mouth of one of his most powerful students, Kimberlé Crenshaw.
This sister knows exactly what Critical Race Theory is (and plenty more about intersectionality, for which white women ought to be grateful — since they benefitted wa-a-y the hell more than we did from it).
If you don’t understand what C.R.T. is AFTER THIS CONVERSATION?? You don’t wanna know. But if you do, and after you let it sink in — ask yourself: "To date, has Derrick Bell’s conclusion that 'Racism is permanent,' been right?" And if it has been — what now?
Let’s explore it a little so we can, at least agree what it is, versus what the hayell is making so-called white folk in these divided states of America lose their damned minds today over teaching true history.
Cobb begins by introducing Derrick Bell, “a young attorney with the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York City,” who thought he was fighting a case for integration in a Harmony, MS public school system.
Turns out, that’s neither what the school, nor the formerly enslaved, Black community in which it stood, wanted. They wanted to be left the hell alone to educate their young, within, and by — the culture in which they’d been raised.
In a revealing, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good kind of way,” Bell’s subsequent victory in Hudson v. Leake County School Board was his first inclination that maybe, just maybe — he’d made a big mistake.
Why? Because, as Cobb wrote, “such rulings sparked white flight from the public schools and the creation of private “segregation academies,” which meant that Black students still attended institutions that were effectively separate.”
I must interject here, that in 1974, I graduated Valedictorian, while my brother skipped a grade saying, “You ain’t leaving me here by my damned self!” — graduating Salutatorian with me, fromM. Rutledge Rivers High School in Charleston, SC — which waspreviously one of those private, “segregation academies.”
As such, I can attest to Bell’s misgivings — because white flight did happen, particularly after we became the second Black family to move into what I call our ”Movin’ On Up” neighborhood around the corner from the school. And, as Bell predicted — we ended up still attending an institution that was effectively separate (much to my heart’s delight as it turned out, cuz I’m certain had it not worked out that way, I would’ve never met, through my English teacher, Mrs. Alfreda Jenkins — the likes of Paul Robeson, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, W. E. B. Du Bois and many other greats).
Please read Millicent Brown’s not so -- Ruby Bridges story of integrating our, very own “segregation academy” that was Rivers High School on September 3, 1963 . I was seven years old, sittin’ on that linoleum floor, at 94 Reid St., watching it happen on our little, Black & White, Zenith TV.
According to Cobb:
Bell spent the second half of his career as an academic and, over time, he came to recognize that other decisions in landmark civil-rights cases were of limited practical impact.He drew an unsettling conclusion: racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it. Racism, he began to argue, is permanent.(emphasis mine)
As unsettling as that conclusion was for Bell, think of the over-abundance of evidence that points to it being exactly true for us — even until today. Exhibit A would be that link up there, about the bomb threats to HBCUs made during the “advent of this already-tumultuous Black History Month.”
Bomb a church in Birmingham, killing four little Black girls, check. Threaten to bomb several schools that teach young, Black folk, including young girls, check (these Mofos are obsessed with bombing “colored folk” — at home and abroad, ain’t they??). {SMDH}
Think about it, Fam — we fought for the right to educate, as well as celebrate, our lived experiences in, and contributions to, this country thanks to Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week. And through a successive wave of reform, it became Black History Month. However, because as Bell asserted, “racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society, it has been able to reassert itself” yet again with all of this crazed, vitriol against Critical Race Theory (C.R.T.) these folks have been spewing, just to make sure our stories can’t legally be taught in schools. Pretty much cancels out Black History Month, no?
Even though, as Cobb continues:
After more than a quarter of a century, there is an extensive academic field of literature cataloguing C.R.T.’s insights into the contradictions of anti-discrimination law and the complexities of legal advocacy for social justice. (emphasis mine)…
So-called “white folk” (more on that later) keep on lying that it’s being taught to their children in schools, K-12, to shame them and make them feel “uncomfortable.” Am I the only one that recognized the words “anti-discrimination LAW” and “LEGAL ADVOCACY” in C.R.T.’s insights? C.R.T. is teaching about LEGAL SYSTEMS of discrimination in LAW SCHOOLS!
But these fools want to paint our simply teaching and sharing our true history and contributions to America as C.R.T.’s assault against their children (somebody learned some new words somewhere.). Is Bell’s conclusion that “racism is permanent” on point? You tell me.
Cobb reminds us further:
For the past several months, however, conservatives have been waging war on a wide-ranging set of claims that they wrongly ascribe to critical race theory, while barely mentioning the body of scholarship behind it or even Bell’s name. As Christopher F. Rufo, an activist who launched the recent crusade, said on Twitter, the goal from the start was to distort the idea into an absurdist touchstone. “We have successfully frozen their brand — ‘critical race theory’ — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category,” he wrote. Accordingly, C.R.T. has been defined as Black-supremacist racism, false history, and the terrible apotheosis of wokeness.(emphasis mine)
Ask yourself, Fam, have you EVER heard any of these fools either in Congress, or at school board meetings, mention Derrick Bell’s name in their racist psycho-babble? Save your breath, that’d be a Hayell No! And that’s because they don’t know it, or care to know it. Nor do they care to know that C.R.T. is a university-level academic discipline based on the idea that racism is embedded in U.S. legal and other structures. All they care about is continuing to dumb-down themselves and their poor children in the name of their waning white supremacy. It’s times like these that I keep hearing my departed Grandmama asking white Jesus to please, “take the wheel.”
James Baldwin spoke wa-a-ay more succinctly and eloquently than I ever could, about why so-called white folk are losing their damned minds today over race.
In his seminal, “On Being White and Other Lies,”he eviscerates whiteness and lays bare the weakness in white leadership under which we continue to labor — for our lives.
“No one was white before he/she came to America. It took generations, and a vast amount of coercion, before this became a white country.
It is probable that it is the Jewish community or more accurately, perhaps, its remnants — that in America has paid the highest and most extraordinary price for becoming white. For the Jews came here from countries where they were not white, and they came here, in part, because they were not white; and incontestably in the eyes of the Black American (and not only in those eyes) American Jews have opted to become white, and this is how they operate. (emphasis mine)
A side-note here, this is how the EGOT, Whoopie Goldberg, recently got got. Because the Jews became white and operated as such, Black folk see them as white people. Goldberg said the Holocaust wasn't about race — because, after paying the price of the ticket (becoming white), they operated as white people here in America. So, in her allyship, she uttered the words no Jew would entertain as true (though Whoopie and countless other Black Americans see how they operate as white folk) — the Holocaust was a “man’s inhumanity to man” thing, versus a race thing. And I agree with her, because even though the NAZIS deemed them as an inferior “race” — when they got here, they operated as white folk. Either it’s religious persecution or racial persecution, y’all gotta pick, or probably not, given “white” America’s fealty to them Benjamins (yeah I said it!).
Since I’d hate to waste nary a day of our only, 28-day celebration of Black History Month, I’d like to share a little Bryan Stevenson on Critical Race Theory — and some other powerful things:
As you listen, notice the same, damned “bomb threats” bullshit at the 2:48 time hack. I'm tellin’ y’all — THEY ARE OBSESSED!
At the 4:12 time hack, we hear Brian Stevenson say: “We just had the 20th anniversary of 9/11…We believe in memorializtion in this country.”
To which Pogue replies: “But that’s different… It’s easier for Americans to memorialize something that was done to us, than it is to memorialize something we did to others.” (Mighty f*ckin Mitch McConnell of you there Pogue!)
Mr. Pogue, and I give you that respect, grudgingly — therein lies the rub, We(Black people of the United States) are Americans. These atrocities were/are committed against/done to “Americans”.
Cobb continues:
People who looked at the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others and concluded that they were not anomalies but evidence that the system was functioning as it was designed to, were articulating the conclusion that Bell had drawn decades earlier.
Bell, who died in 2011, at the age of eighty, would have been less focussed on the fact that white politicians responded to that reckoning by curtailing discussions of race in public schools than that they did so in conjunction with a larger effort to shore up the political structures that disadvantage African Americans. Another irony is that C.R.T. has become a fixation of conservatives despite the fact that some of its sharpest critiques were directed at the ultimate failings of liberalism, beginning with Bell’s own early involvement with one of its most heralded achievements.“The gap between words and reality in the American project — that is what critical race theory is, where it lies,” Perry told me. The gap persists and, consequently, Bell’s perspective retains its relevance. Even after his death, it has been far easier to disagree with him than to prove him wrong.
Vinay Harpalani told me, “Someone asked him once, ‘What do you say about critical race theory?’ ” Bell first replied, “I don’t know what that is,” but then offered, “To me, it means telling the truth, even in the face of criticism.”
And isn’t that ALL it is, Fam? Just isn’t it?? White folk don’t want their children to learn what f*kin’ racists, white suptemacists, muderers, they’re ancestors have always been. Too late to be ashamed now Mofos — your children SEE YOU!
What’s really going on today in these divided states of America is Derrick Bell’s, “Critical Race Theory” writ large -- which I reiterate here: “Racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it. Racism is permanent.”
