bygINCpresents... Oronde Ash [The Black Box and Your Flight To Life]

UBUNTU RADIO with Oronde Ash --Laye Traore Interview

2009-12-05T08:26:00.002-05:00

Laye Traore Interview

At age seven, Laye Traore walked for a year to escape civil war in Liberia. He eventually made it to a refugee cam in Guinea and onto the United States. In this interview he talks about that year walking for survival.

ORONDE ASH RADIO INTERVIEW, OCT, 17, 2009 --CREATIVE SOUL SHOW

2009-10-17T17:50:00.007-04:00

ORONDE ASH INTERVIEW, OCT., 17 ON THE CREATIVE SOUL SHOW

I begin talking about 9 minutes into the show.

ORONDE ASH RADIO INTERVIEW, OCT 3, 2009 --KHALIFAH'S BOOKNOTES

2009-10-03T13:57:00.006-04:00

ORONDE ASH INTERVIEW, OCTOBER 3, 2009 --KHALIFAH'S BOOKNOTES
I begin talking about 48 minutes in to broadcast. Fast forward to minute 48.

DEBUT NOVEL

2009-08-12T20:47:00.004-04:00

My debut novel, 17 to Life: A Black Boy Memoir (On Becoming A Human... Being in America)
has been published and is available for purchase at www.lulu.com.

CNN's Black In America 2-- July 22, 23

2009-07-17T08:27:00.003-04:00

From health to education, CNN’s “Black in America 2” continues to investigate some of the most significant and challenging issues facing African-Americans. Airing on July 22 & 23 at 8PM (ET), host Soledad O'Brien focuses on emerging leaders, innovative community programs and business ventures that are addressing the most persistent and pressing issues and disparities facing African-Americans. Here is the trailer and some brand new clips, as well as the episode summaries for both nights.

On July 22, Black in America 2: Today’s Pioneers will examine the programs and progress of people working in ways large and small to make a difference. This is the story of community organizers across the country and the progress and improvements that they are creating locally.

On July 23, Black in America 2: Tomorrow’s Leaders will look at solutions aimed to developing leaders of tomorrow. We meet those that have already achieved heights of power, education and influence. And, we learn how others are reaching out to the next generation to ensure their success and achievement.

KEYNOTE SPEECH, NC STATE UNIV. CHARACTER EDUCATION CONFERENCE

2009-04-12T20:09:00.003-04:00

DJ GIG, WSHA 88.9 FM, WED. NIGHTS 8-11

2008-11-14T17:02:00.006-05:00

Check out my jazz show, Straight No Chaser, on WSHA 88.9 FM, Raleigh, Wednesday nights, 8-11 PM. Click to hear.

YES HE... WE DID!

2008-11-05T18:49:00.001-05:00

TRIP TO TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, OCT 24-26

2008-10-28T17:10:00.009-04:00

I was invited to Texas A&M University Oct. 24-26 by the Exceptional Men of the Talented Tenth Inc. I talked to the brothas --and sista-- about my early journey from black boy to black man in America and their responsibility to be enlightened witnesses to their life and times. We discussed the 2008 Presidential election and the atmosphere in and around College Station, TX.

Keep your heads up fellas! Do what you can with what you have available. Reach one. Teach one. One brotha at a time.

Thanks to Terry Dike for the conversation, the invitation, the planning and prepping. I look forward to returning soon and will post video of the speech on my Youtube page.

Me and Big Daddy

2008-10-28T06:47:00.004-04:00

Where: Flight from Charlotte to Raleigh, NC
When: Sunday, October 26, 2008
Time: 1-2 PM

I'm connecting on a US Airways flight to Raleigh, NC. Last leg of my trip from Texas A&M University. I see this fella standing up when the flight attendant announces boarding. "Could that be... Nah? But it does look like... A bit shorter than I thought. Play it off, Oronde," so I do. I wasn't into hip-hop when dude was king of the world back in '87-'89. I appreciate his music now 'cause it reminds me of the best in them days.

I get to seat 8A. "What are the chances dude's gonna sit right next to me?" No worries. Just sit down and read something. I pull out my manuscript, 17 to Life, the one with my picture on the cover, thinking it would be a great conversation starter. It's my life story in Brooklyn. He grew up in Brooklyn. I talk about my journey from black boy to black man in America. I'm sure he has something to say 'bout that. Who knows? Maybe dude knows someone in big time publishing. I'll give him a copy of my DVD with the Youtube videos so he can watch. This is my big break.

So dude sits down next to me. Right next to me. I see possibilities in my head. In row 8, it's me at the window, dude in the aisle seat, the aisle itself, another guy and dude's assistant near the other window. Before dude gets comfy, the other guy asks him, "You wanna sit with your friend? We can switch so you guys can sit together."

Damn! Damn Damn! (Like Florida on Good Times)

So no convo with dude. No connection at all. All I'm left with is this picture from RDU baggage claim.

MENTORING THE YOUTH

2008-09-01T10:26:00.002-04:00

I was a recent guest on the Man Talk Radio Show. The issue was mentoring youth. I am introduced in the 22nd minute.

DRC CLOTHING PHOTO CONSCIOUS EVENT

2008-08-31T12:50:00.009-04:00

DRC Clothing's Photo Conscious event on Saturday, August 30 at the 202 Lounge in Durham, NC. My first time doing anything like this. A few photos are below.

bygINCpresents... UBUNTU RADIO with Oronde ash

2008-08-28T13:33:00.005-04:00

I am launching a new radio program on Blog Talk Radio.
The first show with air Friday, August 29, 2008, 11:30 AM EST and play for about 1 hour. Come join me. Listen in at work, at home. There will be a link on the side of this page for future episodes.

Ubuntu is a Bantu word meaning:
The only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back to me.

UBUNTU RADIO will present stories about people, lives and experiences that reflect the wide range of humanity. Perhaps you will see yourself in the tales and be inspired to shine on for someone else.

INTERVIEW --THE AL WOODS SHOW

2008-08-14T17:21:00.003-04:00

The Al Woods Show (39 minutes in)

Talk on college recruiting, sports, soccer, my book, my life now.

DADDY. YOU DO HAVE A JOB

2008-08-12T12:41:00.005-04:00

Where:
The family car after watching the movie Nim's Island Sunday afternoon.

Who:
Me and my five year old son Ohene.

Prologue:
Ohene had been asking for popcorn the whole movie. I didn't have the money to buy any. He fussed for a bit then settled down and we enjoyed the movie.

CUT TO: Interior, Car, Day

Ohene: Can we go to the store to get some popcorn?
Me: No. We can get some at home.
Ohene: Why can't we buy some at the store?
Me: Because I don't have the money.
Ohene: Why does everything cost money?
Me: That's just the way it is.
Ohene: Why don't you have any money?
Me: Because daddy doesn't have a job right now.
Ohene: But you do have a job.
Me: Yeah, what's my job?
Ohene: (Matter of factly) To take care of me.
Me: (Absolutely blown away at this point. Adjusting the rear view mirror to take a look at my bundle of joy) And how do I get paid for that?
Ohene: With hugs and kisses 'cause I love you very much.
Me: (Feeling like the richest man in the world) And I love my job very much too.

BMWs, VISION BOARDS AND RADIO SHOWS

2008-08-01T14:24:00.069-04:00

bygINCpresents... Oronde Ash Author/Educator/Speaker, has made contact.

I got a call yesterday morning --Thursday, July 31-- from Mrs. Saideh Brown, host of Life Remixed Radio. Mrs. Browne asked if I would talk about my reaction to CNN's Black in America special. Was the show fair? Did it change anything? This would be my first interview as a personality/social commentator.

Black in America Interview, Part II --Friday, August 1 (22 minutes in)
Black in America Interview, Part I --Thursday, July 31

The sound quality is a bit muffled in Part I because I was talking through my computer connection but... my motivational speaker and life coaching company, bygINCpresents Oronde Ash, has to start somewhere.

Saideh Browne is President of Platinum Speaker's Bureau. On Monday, I listened to a podcast of her show titled How To Make Motivational Speaking Your Day Job and immediately sent this email to her office

"Missed the live show today. If you will be spending the week talking about motivational speaking, I will be listening. I did my first network TV interview (EPISODE 2325: Black Identity Formation) yesterday and look forward to building a [speaking] business. I'm willing and ready to work. I know it's on me to make it happen. I want to do nothing but share my story and the lessons learned to anyone who wants to listen.

I'd like to talk to you more about the Platinum Speakers Bureau. I have something to say about what it means to go from black boy to black man in America, what it means to come into one's own, navigate through school, excel and give back.

Visit me to get a sense of where I'm coming from. The words are from my books. The narration is me. The production is my amateur attempt at documentary... I have something to say.

Look forward to connecting with you.

I also sent an email to her radio producer asking to be a future guest on the show. In the email, I included a brief personal bio highlighting my educational history, why I wish to be a speaker and the topics I feel most comfortable discussing. I also put a link to my Youtube Page.

On Tuesday afternoon, around 3 PM, I cold-called Platinum Speaker's Bureau. Mrs. Browne was on her way to a business meeting but still talked to me for five minutes, promising to call me back at 6 PM Tuesday evening to continue the conversation. At exactly 6 PM, as promised, she called. (Can't say enough about [business] folks who follow through on their promises. She gained a bit of my respect with that simple act.)

While on the phone, Saideh began reading my email. She made small comments about my bio like, "We can work with that," or "This is a start." When she got to the Youtube link, she clicked, began to watch one of my videos and asked if it would be okay to call me right back. I was hurrying out my house to drive across town and train a group of soccer players so the break would give me time to prepare for what I had to do next.

While driving to the soccer field, Saideh called me back (a woman of her word) and said, simply... "Amazing." She said the word with a soft, breathless whisper and repeated it once or twice more. I asked which video had she seen? She recounted a few images and ideas from --of the three links I sent-- the one I'd rather she had not seen first (Note to self and others: If you want others to see you at your best, only show your best. Simple enough, right?) but her admiration for the video's content, presentation and message was evident.

Saideh said something like, "I don't usually do this, but I get a feeling from you." She told me she was on a New Jersey highway when she got my call that afternoon. She was in a hurry and ordinarily wouldn't have answered the phone, but decided to. Thinking out loud, Saideh began calculating where I could fit on her speaker roster and what type of audience would be receptive to my story and message. She settled on middle schoolers, noting that speakers traditionally concentrate on the college and high school market because that's where the money is. But middle school, she said, is where the problems start. I told her I agreed and mentioned I had a series of six videos on Youtube talking about my middle school years in Brooklyn, NY. What I saw, what I felt, how those years transformed my self-image and shaped me forever.

"You know what?" Mrs. Browne began, and proceeded to tell me that it was great luck we were talking about middle schools, my videos, speaking, etc., because at 5:59 PM that day, immediately before she called me, she had received an email from a middle school teacher's conference happening in three weeks. She read me the email, noting that the teachers were looking for someone to talk about the middle school experience, how teacher's changed their lives, improvements that could be made, etc. All the ideas reflected upon in my Youtube videos were a perfect match for this conference --happening in three weeks.

After another twenty minutes talking, laughing, connecting, Saideh ended the call, promising to email me a Platinum Speaker's Bureau contract on Wednesday morning

My point: Put yourself out there. Go after what you want and the universe will try to work with you.

This week it's working with me. But this week has been a long time coming. I've been putting my name, my company name and ideas out there as a speaker, life coach, social commentator for a while now, specifically since October 2007. On October 14, 2007, I had major ACL surgery on my right knee. I was on painkillers for a few days, unable to stay awake for long stretches at a time or even eat much. I spent the rest of the month and much of November rehabbing my knee everyday.

Slowly, my body began feeling better. With the blood flowing freely through me again, I wanted to do something. I was tired of sitting down with my legs up watching TV. Someone suggested buying a MAC computer because they were good for creating things. I applied for a Best Buy credit card, purchased a MAC desktop on store credit, figured out iMovie and GarageBand, produced videos of me reading from my unpublished, first novel, 17 to Life: A Black Boy Memoir, and posted them on Youtube.

Since then, I've developed a small following. Over two hundred people have subscribed to my channel and thousands more have visited. Viewers are relating to the story of my life, my book and the ideas I share. I have been... speaking to them.

Two weeks ago, July 11-13, 2008, I was invited to deliver a seminar at the Lutheran Social Services Teen Haven AIDS Retreat in Maryland. The lady who hired me, Kristen Mehr, is a friend of a friend who also saw my Youtube videos. She emailed my friend saying I was a bit critical of [white] America. I knew exactly why she would have thought that too.

Anyone who only looks at only my first two Youtube videos, The New Immigrant or Dining in America may think I'm being critical. But those were my initial impressions of America as a nine year old, immigrant, [black] boy in an all white New Jersey suburb. The rest of my videos and my book talks about getting over that impression and discovering truth --about America, blackness, malenesss, what it is to be a decent human being.

I immediately called Kristen back and, rather sternly, demanded she look at all my videos before judging either me or my message. In fact, I told her, I would call her back later that week to make sure she did... I called her back. And the next time we talked she said my message was perfect for the black kids she would be dealing with in a few weeks. "What kids?" I asked. Kristen then told me about the Teen Haven AIDS Retreat. I didn't know she was hosting a retreat for young AIDS patients about empowerment or living your best life. I didn't know the attendees would be teens... mostly black teens from Washington DC's inner-city. I didn't know any of this. If I did, maybe I would not have been so aggressive or forthright with her? Maybe I would have held my tongue in check, hoping to get hired?... But then again, maybe my aggressiveness and willingness to defend my stance, my work, my message and my story is what got me to Teen Haven --my first paid speaking gig.

The first night of the retreat, the other guest speaker, April Snell, finished her seminar on meditation and experiencing the things we cannot necessarily see, hear, touch or smell. She then had the teens and the staff create individual vision boards. A vision board is a collage you create with pictures, objects or words about the dreams and goals you want to make real in your life.

So like a kindergarten student, I cut out photos from the magazines April provided or headlines that spoke to my vision. I crazy glued my scraps to a piece of blue construction paper. My vision board. It is hanging on my closet door, facing me... reminding me... directing me everyday.

When I made my vision board, I gave myself 18 months to make it happen. I know you shouldn't put a time limit on the will of the universe, but 18 months kept ringing in my head. I mean, if, for example, singer Jennifer Hudson can go from American Idol nobody one minute to Oscar winner in 18 months, I can belt out my truth loud and strong and accomplish a few things. Like Ms. Hudson, mine will not be overnight success. I am willing and ready to work for whatever is coming to me.

Jennifer Hudson sang for years in obscurity but she kept singing. Me? I've been crafting my vision for a minute now. Sometimes I didn't know I was but I was. In college the community outreach coordinator regularly asked me to talk to local school children. I talked to recruits, university donors, anyone who could benefit from hearing my story. Then, I didn't see it as public speaking, building a name or developing a platform. I spoke because I liked to. I like that someone other than me was benefiting from my words.

In college, I wrote my first memoir, 17 to Life. Didn't do it as part of a college English class exercise or writing workshop. Nobody has given me or promised me money for the manuscript. I wrote it simply because I have something to say about what it means, how it was to go from [black] boy to man in America today.

A funny thing happened the night I made my vision board. I took part in the meditation session about twenty minutes prior so maybe the universe and I were in sync with my past, the present and my possible future.

Along with other images, I began frantically looking for a photo of a BMW 325i. Perhaps it has something to do with my BLACK BOX concept. A black 325i is the sleekest, coolest black box I've ever seen. To me, BMWs represent young, fresh up-and-coming greatness. That's me. I'm greatness up-and-coming. I want to own one. It's my sleek black symbol.Unfortunately, BMWs were not advertised in the mostly black magazines we were using, like Ebony or Black Enterprise. (What's up with that?) I had the teens at my table scouring through their magazines to find me a BMW. No luck.

The next morning, the campers were scheduled to climb a rock as an extension of the vision exercise. They were told to see the thirty-foot rock-face as a representation of whatever obstacle was holding them back from being the person they wanted or getting the things they desired. In scaling the rock, each teen would be surmounting whatever hold was preventing them from getting the most from their life.

I was directed to drive ahead with another staffer so an adult would be waiting for the teens at the staging area. As the car I was in made a left out of our cabin driveway, I screamed at the driver to STOP! We were at the top of a hill and she hadn't seen the car racing up, cresting, ready to smash into us. My driver slammed on our brakes with a sudden jerk.

After my life returned to me and blood stopped racing, I relaxed, breathed a sigh of relief for not being killed. I looked up to see that the other car racing towards me was... a BMW... A blue Roadster. (By the way, they seem to have excellent brakes.)

As we drove past the Roadster, I noticed one BMW, then another and another. BMWs of varying models, colors and ages were lined up back to back to back to back, stretching for at least 200 yards down the hill. On a two-lane mountain road, there was no way I would miss the BMW parade. I had to look at them. In fact, the only way I would have noticed was if the lead car --the blue Roadster-- was forced to stop suddenly so that the fifteen or twenty other BMWs behind it had to do the same.

Life... the universe... a brush with death stopped me, jerked me to life and presented me, not a picture, but a living, moving collage of what I wanted. I was present in the moment. That moment was my present. And I was open to what was happening.

Perhaps I had willed that moment into being by meditating on it the night before. Even the other passenger in the car was quick to remind me that I finally got my BMW. Everyone making their vision boards the night before heard knew I wanted a picture of a BMW to find a BMW. Some were looking in their magazines for me. Maybe we all willed the moment into being? Maybe I was doing some good talking to teenagers the world has already condemned to die, so the universe gave me some good in return? Or maybe... maybe it was just a BMW driver's club going for a Saturday morning jaunt through the countryside --a bunch of rich suburban professionals flaunting their affluence

Whatever was going on, the universe had awoken me that morning to exactly what I was searching for. And it didn't give it to me once. The universe reminded me in spades, in different colors and models, a veritable collage, a vision of BMWs coming up as I was driving down a hill to climb up a rock that represented overcoming the hurdles in my life, to get the things I want most.

My point, again: Put yourself out there. Go after what you want. Climb your rock. Drive you car, your will. Plan to get going and the universe will conspire to work with you. You may not get things exactly when and how you want them, but your vision will come to you. You just have to be ready to see, appreciate, take note and act accordingly when it does.

Since last October, slowly but surely, especially when I'm sharing my life story with others, showing love to my family or teaching, the universe has reminded me that my vision matters. Whether it be an intrinsic understanding felt, like the soothing wave pulsating through my body while I meditated that first night of the retreat, massaging away fatigue and worry. (I'd meditated before but never felt anything real from it.) Or whether it is astonishment felt in a profound question from my five year old son --some question I may have already been asking myself in another form-- the universe has often returned me a sense of awe, respect, of being a part of something much bigger than myself. Those instances have always made me feel good about what I was doing and the people there.

So four days ago, I cold-called the President of Platinum Speaker's Bureau. Mrs. Saideh Browne called me back the next day. A day after that, I was a guest on her radio show, speaking to her radio audience, showcasing to her I can do what her clients are paid to do. My point: I'M BEING!... MY VISION.

This blog, this entry will be another snapshot for my vision board. I'm putting my thoughts, my wishes, my dreams --myself-- out there, attracting the things I want in my life. Contact with folks in the speaking industry. Becoming part of a speaker's organization. Developing a name, a voice, a brand. Building platforms to share my story and message. Earning a living. Creating a stable life for my family and me, so we can raze each other and others.

In the next 18 months, my plan is as follows:

(1). I plan to command no less the $2500 for major gigs as a speaker --specifically, on the college and high school circuit. I plan to schedule at least 4 major gigs/months while still devoting time to teaching, coaching children, and volunteering in local youth organizations.

(2). I plan to get me and my wife caught up on our bills, be significantly out of debt and buy her a real wedding ring.

(3). I plan to be living in a 3-4 bedroom house with my wife and son. There will be an additional room for my office, hardwood floors, rugs instead of carpet, two sinks in the master bedroom --one for me, one for her-- a walk-in closet and grass in the backyard for me and my son to play soccer.

(4). I plan to co-create and help facilitate a 10-12 week program that focuses on the personal development of adolescent males. I want to encourage [black] boys to be honest, have character, pursue greatness no matter their circumstance. The program will fall under the bygLIFEcoaching arm of my company bygINCpresents. Participants will be shown simple skills to become more productive college-ready students. How to take notes or how to effectively read a textbook? They will be trained to communicate better through the spoken and written word and, among other things, learn to critically analyze media, pop culture and literature for the stories behind the pictures and the words. At the end of the program, each participant will make a 5-minute presentation on what they have learned and where that knowledge may take them.

(5). I plan to be known for THE BLACK BOX AND YOUR FLIGHT TO LIFE concept

(6). I plan to solicit funding and develop an organizational structure for my free Saturday Morning Soccer Clinic in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and be able to spend July and August running a youth soccer league and personal development program there.

(7). I plan to meet Steve Nash, talk to him about his philanthropic efforts in the third world, have him sign a jersey I can give my father --named Alban Nash-- and be invited to play in Steve's charity summer soccer game in NYC --alongside Thierry Henry.

(8). I plan to drive a black BMW 325i with a tan, leather interior and a movie screen in the roof so my son can watch Ben Ten Alien Force and play video games.

Simple enough, right?

Don't leave this article thinking I'm far-fetched, materialistic or solely into status. Not at all. The BMW is a black box. It's a symbol.

The 325i will serve as a symbol of what I've made manifest for my family and me. It will be the sleekest black box reminding me of my flight to life, where I've come from and where I still need to go.

I recognize that journey will be the most important thing. I will hold strong to the journey I'm on and whatever the next 18 months will bring. That will be my status. I will be a model for someone else.

So I'm off to grind, to market, promote and sell myself, book speaking engagements to colleges, high schools, middle schools, teacher organizations, youth groups, businesses, more radio shows, more documentaries, more gigs, better digs more of me out into the world so more of the world can flow into me. A vicious cycle of goodness transferring back and forth, inspiring, creating, inspiring creation, creating inspiration... and change.

Bless.

RADIO INTERVIEW ON "LIFE REMIXED RADIO" w/ HOST SAIDEH BROWNE

2008-07-31T14:36:00.013-04:00

My first radio interview as a personality/commentator. Saideh BRown of Life Remixed Radio.

Black in America Interview, Part II --Friday, August 1 (22 minutes in)
Black in America Interview, Part I --Thursday, July 31

OIL (Black and Liquid in Modernity)--Pt. 5, LEADERS

2008-07-26T13:03:00.001-04:00

LEADERS vs. MENTORS/COUNSELORS.

The time for leaders is upon us; to stand with discipline and purpose. There are no signposts for a better tomorrow. Never have been. There are men and women of conscience and what they can do today. And mistakes will be made as they always have been. And leaders will rise, as there always have to.

Ready to stand and deliver? The world is waiting for you.

AMASONGS, VOL. 1, SUN IS SHINING (FOR MY WIFE)

2008-07-14T20:14:00.006-04:00

I LOVE MY WIFE. I know she loves me but... life's kicking our butt these days. She's taken on the burden of the house and is STRESSED... always. I am doing what I can to make it happen for my family. I have a plan. Little by little, it's falling into place. But it's big though. It's everything I want and I'm going for it. I know where I want me and my family to be in 18 months and I will get us there.

Like life, that journey starts with people, especially those closest to you... I LOVE MY WIFE... I don't say it enough... I LOVE MY WIFE... I want y'all to know and pass that feeling onto her... onto whomever you are closest to.

Sometimes I forget to say it enough, so I need your help. Click on the links below. They're my wife's pages on the web. Go to where she is and say hello. Tell her she's doing great, become a friend, remind her it will all be okay in the end... She knows that, but a little reminder never hurt you, right?

Thanks... Bless.

VISIT HER:
Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/soledadsista3

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1208826110&ref=mf

Blog:
http://soledadsista.blogspot.com

More AMASONGS to come... Stay tuned.

BLACK MAN DANCING ON THE WORLD

2008-07-07T19:52:00.016-04:00

Two hours ago, I came across a New York Times article on Matt Harding, the dancing man. You may not know the name Matt Harding, but if you frequent Youtube or other video hosting sites as I have the past eight months, you've seen him dancing.

Went to his website and watched a presentation on his travels around the world. I have to do a few powerpoint presentations over the next three weeks. I'll talk about moving from one phase of your life to another, taking note of the transitions, recognizing the power you have no matter where you go and making your flight to life as smooth as possible. Matt's presentation and story mirrored much of what I wish to talk about.

Me? I haven't traveled the world for fun but I've wanted to. Who hasn't. I was born on the island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean and moved to the US when I was nine. More or less an American now. Grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I've traveled the Northeast as far as Boston and Buffalo, been to Los Angeles, Dallas, Tulsa and Orlando. Most of my trips have been soccer related. I've been to Paris, France for ten days, spent another ten just north of Milan, Italy to play in a soccer tournament sponsored by Ferrari. I've passed through Manchester airport in England, Frankfurt in Germany, Ohare in Chicago, Pearson Int'l in Toronto, Canada .

Since 1985, I've gone back to St. Vincent three times. My latest was over Christmas 2007. Was the first time I went back for fun. The other two times I was asked to play for my country's national soccer team so I spent my weeks there training three times/day, sleeping in between workouts, playing a game or two then immediately returning to school in the US. Never got to see much of the island until last Christmas... I need to go back.

I need to do what Matt did but all over the Caribbean. Not that I don't eventually want to see the byg [BIG] world. I want to start in my corner first. I know little about the history, people and the places in the Caribbean and would like to curb my ignorance. My mother spent her early twenties island-hopping. She was living then. The Caribbean --her world-- was hers to explore. When it was time to move me and my sisters to the US, Ma had no fears because she'd been places and knew she could survive, thrive and be herself anywhere.

So back to Matt Harding, the dancing man. He and I are still young. He's 31. I'm... around there. In 2003, he worked for a few months, saved up his money, quit his job then took off. I can't do that these days. I got a wife and a five year old son and bill collectors. Would be nice to take my family along though and share the experience. Cultural missionaries of some kind. All of us learning together. Real bonding.

One of my first thoughts reading about Matt was... Why don't I see more young, black men doing that? No, I don't mean quitting a job, especially in these harsh economic times. I'm talking about a young, black man doing something this silly, this infectious, this beautiful. What? We don't think we can? It's a huge world out there waiting for any adventurer. Matt knows this. He knew this before he left the US and he certainly has come to know this now. He says his biggest realization in traveling has been the security in knowing he can handle himself in any situation. Travel does that. A mind is expanded. Faith in humanity --in your humanity-- is gained.

I mean, how can I consent to bombing THEM, if I went to THEIR country and came to KNOW and like THEM?

When I first got to the US in 1985, Ronald Reagan Jr. was a roving reporter for Good Morning America on ABC. He'd do segments where he'd jump out of airplanes, dive into shark infested waters, fight Sumo wrestlers. He was risking his life and making it through every time. He was learning about what he could do, could be.

I wanted to do that but those reporters on network TV were usually young, white guys. I never saw black reporters on those assignments. I wanted those... I still want those assignments.

I wanted to live life in full if just to show other young, black boys I grew up with that anything was possible for them. America was new and inspiring and waiting for me to conquer but I never saw black folks doing as much... just surviving on TV shows like Good Times or Gimme a Break.

It seems a running joke for any black comedian to clown on the white guy who goes off and lives with wild bears or freezes to death climbing Mt. Everest --the guy traveling the world, living his life, exploring all the beauty God put on this planet for each of us to find wander in.

Matt Harding has found the wonder we all need to dance upon this Earth.

His life has been made better by his traveling. He was fortunate to have money and youth and time. Perhaps the prevailing notion is that young, black men don't have that freedom because we're poor beyond any economic measure, we're doing time inside or outside the prison walls, doing prison inside our conceptions of what is possible for so many of us in this... OUR WORLD. Perhaps we are not shown enough travelogues of real freedom, of living life in full. We are busy surviving. Whether it's the job we can't quit, the lacking impetus to explore beyond the boxes our lives are programmed to fit in or even the silly pleasure in making a complete fool of ourselves like Matt admits he has done on so many occasions, all over the world --a world he feels closer to now, a man he's come to know more now.

I'm one black man... I got little rhythm but I promise you I'm'a dance on the world before I'm done. And you will bare witness.

CULTURED SOLDIERS --A DREAM TRANSFERRED (BLACK ICE)

2008-06-01T16:32:00.006-04:00

My first video for Youtube channel FORWARDUNITY. I went to a Black Male Development Symposium on May 10. There I saw the rapper/poet Black Ice and bought his CD THE DEATH OF WILLIE LYNCH. (Go get that if you haven't already). Listened to it the whole 8-hr. drive back home. Love track 3, A DREAM TRANSFERRED. Thought I'd share some thoughts.

NOW I MUST BLOG --Black Male Development Symposium

2008-05-13T10:02:00.018-04:00

i've never used this space to blog. this has been a depot for my writing and efforts at gaining credibility among the internet cognoscenti as an intellect of some weight. i was waiting for the afrospear or the bloggers with daily hits in the thousands to anoint me the next great ideas man, waiting for a book or magazine editor to have a eureka moment in discovering the next james baldwin. heck, maybe mos def would pass by when someone who knew someone who knew something linked this site to him. i haven't given up there. i'm'a meet mos def soon enough. i'm publishing my first novel, 17 to Life: A Black Boy Memoir, this summer. this will get me out there as an ideas man. and my next book,james, mos def, MY BROTHA & me will get me to mos. but now... now i must blog.

i don't wish to talk about the politics of the nation or delve into polemics on social ills. i've done that enough. i find greater value in disseminating the truth and madness behind life politics. i want folks to pay attention to their lives. all truth resides there. know you and the world become whole again --becomes home again. you can then better deal because the dealing gets better.

the daily grind is the vista from whence my creative urges first sprung. if you've seen any of my previous videos or the ones on my Youtube page you will recognize this. life has given me sustenance, juice, angst and energy. as it should. i want all the world to plug into the socket of life and sock it to life. life wills that much from us. it wants that challenge. that's the only way life learns.

now i must blog...

on saturday, may 10th, i was invited as a special guest to the 5th annual black male development symposium at arcadia university in glenside, pa. i'm not a talent yet worthy of special guest status, but dr. doreen loury comped me the registration fee.

i called three weeks ago and found out she needed speakers. i submitted an abstract that would have me talking about my book, the transformative events in my life and how that related to the black male experience in america. i wasn't sure if i could conduct a 60 minute workshop but planned one out and i was ready to try. i wrote a speech that incorporated the autobiographical videos i've made. built up the idea of life as a black boy being encapsulated in a black box --like the ones on airplanes (i will further this idea more and plan to be known for this in two years time) i was ready to go, but dr. loury finally got back to me last week saying she had other speakers. i think she felt guilty for making me wait so long so she comped me the $25 registration fee. no matter. the trip still cost me close to $250. i drove from raleigh to philly with gas prices at $3.79. add a hotel room for one night and food. costly trip but it was worth it.

i caught the tail end of felicia pride talking about her book THE MESSAGE: 100 LIFE LESSONS FROM HIP HOP'S GREATEST SONGS.
gave her the DVD i made narrating the first half of my memoir. i think she can help. i followed up with an email yesterday. i tell you, when you're dong the right things, the universe conspires to help you.

also listened to frederick gooding and khalid patterson,
editors of THE MINORITY REPORTER, present on You Mean There's Race in My Movie? A Critical Analysis of Race in Mainstream Movies. the two do what i want to do when i talk to young people: use pop culture, movies, hip hop lyrics to discuss the declining significance of race in mainstream culture and what all the words and images say about their burgeoning sense of identity. frederick and khalid wrote a book and DVD i will be buying soon. visit the site when you can. buy the book and the DVD. interesting analysis of blacks in movies and hollywood in general.

in fact, i begin my first ad-hoc barbershop discussion saturday, may 17, with a group of black, male high school students. should be 7-10 of them. i'm calling it bygTALK. part of my new social entrepreneurship project under my company bygINCpresents. looking to make consciousness cool again. 1960s thought with a 21st century remix.

had a short conversation with useni eugene perkins.
his book HARVESTING NEW GENERATIONS: THE POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK YOUTH was good reading ten years ago while i worked on my book james, mos def, MY BROTHA & me. my book is about the generations of black struggle from james baldwin to now and the need to continue that progressive line of thought and social progress in america and the world. i must continue a dialogue with mr. perkins. he can be a mentor. he's been there and talked about all i want to discuss, seen the people i need to meet.

that's black ice, the poet/rapper.
gave him my DVD while i bought his CD THE DEATH OF WILLIE LYNCH. pumped it in my car the 8 hrs back to raleigh. you have to go and cop it. the first verse of track 3, the dream transferred summarizes my book --where i stood as a conscious black boy at 17.

i left the black male development symposium a little surer of how to present my writing, my book, my ideas to the public in a workshop setting. that's the next step. starts this saturday. will continue onwards and upwards. will keep you up-to-date because... now i'm blogging.

RHAPSODY IN BLACK--Black History Month 2008

2008-02-26T15:39:00.004-05:00

OIL (BLACK AND LIQUID IN MODERNITY)--A Rhapsody on Blackness in Many Parts

Black History Month 2008. As always, a time to remember and look ahead. Here are pieces about this man's take on being.

BLACK AND LIQUID IN MODERNITY--PART 1

BLACK AND LIQUID IN MODERNITY--PART 2

BLACK AND LIQUID IN MODERNITY--PART 3

BLACK AND LIQUID IN MODERNITY--PART 4

DAT NIGGA... [I AM]

2008-02-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Saul Williams' poem "Sha-Clack-Clack", here's another motive on the whole NIGGA thing. I want to be that NIGGA Saul describes. It ain't the word at all. It's de-meaning... Don't beat one another over this. Find the meaning in your life and that of others. Beat it out of your self if you have to... Sha-Clack-Clack. Hyah!

More videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/bygINCpresents

JAMES BYRD, JR.

2007-12-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Raleigh News and Observer
Page 4A, Nation Section
Saturday, June 13, 1998
JASPER, TEXAS—

Jasper bares no Tyler rose. “Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze. Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.”

On this juneteenth day, I read of James Byrd Jr., a curt tale chopped short on the newspaper page, for a nation, a picture of two women crying over James Byrd Jr.’s closed casket. Billie Mahathay is in profile. Ruthie Hadnox’s got her back to me. Black and white roses --red and yellow I suppose-- and wreathes well up to their faces. I can’t see their faces but the women are crying ‘cause James Byrd Jr. is dead.

James Byrd Jr. was whole on June 6th, before the asphalt tore him to holy pieces. Now he’s a picture on a casket. A future family flashback. Maybe they’ll remember the day James got the jitter to be a musician and his Mama bought him that second-hand guitar, or the day James got out of jail and promised he’d do her proud this time. What were the jokes James was cackling at the family party he was last seen at? If only I could know.

What else could Ruthie Hadnox and Billie Mahathay be thinking? What will we never know about James Byrd Jr.? Heaven judged too soon and goddess will be blind. Justice will not hang in the balance.

James Byrd Jr. is dead, and as a black body in the Southern breeze I should feel more than apathy. I could have easily been the soul in his truncated torso or the sole of his once free feet. I could be the great, great, great, grand nephew, twenty one times removed from his goddamned granpappy. I should feel more than apathy.

“’Vengeance is mine, said the Lord,’ said the father of James Byrd Jr.”

I should be roaming the streets, alight a fire under Texas, the flag and the Alamo. So what if James' death was not caught on tape? Can't I remember pain or am I that removed from the red pages of black history?

“Byrd's head, neck, right arm and torso were scattered along the route.”

Robert Russell Brewer, 31
John William King, 23
Shaw Berry, 23

The motherfuckers tied James Byrd Jr. to a pick-up truck. He would not fly so they dragged him on asphalt for miles. They thought they knew James Byrd Jr. enough to stand supreme and swing justice blind.

“Burning flesh,” Billie sings. “Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck.”

And, as a black man, I should be more pissed off. Didn’t we march against lynching? Didn’t Billie sing about these things? Who but tomorrow’s microfilm is going to tattle the James Byrd Jr. tale?

Please, remember the story. Raleigh News and Observer, Nation Section, page 4A, column one. It’s an article taken from the Boston Globe ‘cause a Southern paper couldn’t find this home grown Southern story on it’s own.

4A Nation
Please remember the story above the picture of Vice President Gore paddling a canoe in Monterrey Bay to bring awareness to the rash of oil drilling off the California coast.

4A Nation
Al Gore is appalled at the number of dead, black seals found floating off the coast. The vice cares about the American environment. All the living things.

“The moratorium does not, however, affect areas off the Texas coasts, where extensive drilling has been going on for years, nor does it protect any new areas not already covered by the drilling ban first imposed by President Bush in 1990, including the coastlines of the Southeast.”

How close is Jasper to the Texas coast? Maybe it wasn’t protected? Does the moratorium protect me in Raleigh, NC? In the Southeast? Any time? Any town, USA?

Drill all you want, Clinton and Gore continue. Justice paddles a canoe protecting seals. James Byrd Jr. was left wide open that day. His skin, a peel of mangled flesh left to ripen in a Jasper field.

Strange fruit these men. Supremacist, Presidents, vices and death. And us, black bodies hangin’ in the Southern trees. Didn’t we used to get angry about these things? And still Billie sings, “Strange Fruit.”

“for the rain to gather
for the wind to suck
for the sun to rot
for the trees to dry out.”

CHAPTER 1 --james, mos def, MY BROTHA & me

2007-10-06T20:58:00.000-04:00

I.

James, my brother is fourteen now, about the age when you and I began interacting on life with the best and worst of our thoughts. When I go home I see in his eyes, the challenge of becoming human in this new century. I was fortunate to have you as a comrade then and read in your works, especially The Fire Next Time, an excerpt to the story my inner actions were writing. Your Fire lit me and shined a path on how to fight whatever fever or chill will exist in my time.

There were differences between you and me, James, as there are between the two of us and my brother. Somehow, your differences and mine were united by the debilitating elements which sustained the forty years from your Avenue to mine. In seeking our better version, one that held on to dignity, pride and promise in the face of a world which, when left to its own devices, will do everything but uplift the better parts of our black boy selves, we learned more of life than my brother ever will. We knew a mighty power churned within because its movement brought us through pressure, pain, torment and tortuous days when death seemed the most inexpensive, most expressive and freest solution to our malady. Along the way to acceptance and love, you and I found a strength to overcome the misfortune life continued, and continues to blight on its black sons. It was as if the drama of interacting day and night under the backdrop of America's black and white racial projection became a corny, predictable, yet safe Saturday matinee serial which we sat through. We learned to operate, maneuver through, walk around, forget about, confront racism.

You and I (you more than I, and my brother less than me, because his reality has shifted from harsh black and white, to some nebulous touch of gray he may not be able to see through, much less survive) found great satisfaction in overcoming every obstacle a confused and racist society lays out for its damned. With each encounter, you saw as I did, that dealing with racism was a metaphor for achieving a better humanity. And the more I learned about my black history and about myself, the easier it was to make sense of the smoke and mirrors America calls reality. Little has changed in the American theater. The haze of racist ideology is still as damnable and unnecessary as the unconscious people who fear themselves enough to cover their eyes and oppress our lives. Damn them all, you showed me, for my life was more important than their conceptions of it. Some were lesser men who did not merit our pity. Some --for you also saw the conscious white folks out there-- deserved our time and honesty. But most were folks, damned and oppressed like us, yet to come to grips with who they were as human beings.

For you and me, being human began with a foundation in the politics of religious morality. If we played our cards right, the pearly gates, angels and White House of heaven waited in the afterlife. This earthly page was the chronicle of deeds to be kept in that good book opened upon Revelation's trumpeted morning. But something happened to our conviction for a God both of us felt only in fear and mostly when we did bad. (And according to your world, black boys did everything bad.) Like you said, people “ought to love the Lord because they loved Him, and not because they were afraid of going to Hell.” Something happened to you when you found your gimmick for coping with Harlem, USA and became a minister in your father’s church. There you bore witness to the systemic indoctrinating, false piety, illusion and corruption with no salvation for the folks who needed it most --the black folks you and I both knew we had to make sense of and reason for. Something happened to me when I found out what Christianity had done to the black man in the Americas, Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, Australia --wherever the damned lay claim to the oppressive backside of history's misfortune. Something happened which made me question, not the legitimacy of religious virtue --for, as you know, I still feared the fire and brimstone promise of my final days. I questioned the ritual practice of vice in the caveat of organized religion. I sought a better way of teaching humanity's building blocks without turning them into the black boy's stumbling blocks.

I recall an American Studies class in high school where we read documents written by the first settlers at Jamestown. I cut at least once each week, stopped listening to the teacher and cried in silence. It was painful to listen to white people's rationality about slavery. No one saw the tears, but I wept when I understood the logic in the decisions of gentrified, civil English aristocrats. It all made so much sense when my teacher read the journals and manifestos. The first settlers seldom worked the land in England, so why work it in America? When more land became available, they ordered more horses, more oxen, more human chattel to toil beneath a blazing sun. The damn thing was so rational. I understood the logic because scholastic science and math had imbibed in me a process where justifiable action was all but incontestable. They called it the scientific process. That is, if an action could be proven or reasoned through with the use of some organized set of skills and tools, it was, for all intents and purposes, OK --even if justification was only on paper and not in the heart and soul of any human being. I cried when, for one split second, I reasoned that slavery was inevitable and furthermore, it made sense at that time in America’s studies. In that split second, I cursed myself for having a brain, for having thoughts, for skillfully mastering, through years of self denial and self hate, the process of divorcing my black boy gut feelings from the caveat of scholastic thought.

As stated, my early thoughts and yours were dominated by Christian virtue. We were taught morals that would save us --from what, we feared but never fully understood. Growing up, I was told never to look at the sky for too long because I would see the face of God and die immediately. My heaven would come in its own time. I wanted to get there right away, but didn’t want to die to do so. Heaven was important in St. Vincent --my Caribbean island homeland-- as it was in Harlem, in the beginning. Vincentians possessed nothing if not the conviction that our poor lot in life would be made richer by having God in our homes, our hearts and always in the back of our minds. As a boy, I made it clear that I wanted to become a pastor in the Anglican Church. Everyone I talked to accepted this as an attainable goal for it seemed the best way to assure a spot in heaven. My family was well off by our town's standards --we had a refrigerator and more family in America who sent us things-- so the possibility of studying to pastor hood was not altogether ludicrous. Even island society's outcasts, the rastafarians, accepted the sanctity of religious grounding. My father --a devout rastafarian-- knew more about the Bible than any church man or layman I met. Even though he and my mother split when I was five, he kept close enough to give me a black, leather bound, King James Bible for my sixth birthday --so we could be closer in spirit and with Jah. My father lived my himself but he was never alone. He grew whatever food he needed and seldom went without. In the simplicity of his self-sufficient, subsistent lifestyle he showed me some people didn't need an institution to learn and live a spiritual life.

I wonder about my brother's youthful spirit, James, not on any religious level, but on the human level you and I both know it dwells on, begs to be looked at, studied, engaged with, outwitted, defied and ultimately mastered. You came from the blacker days of my American history, when religious hypocrisy, political chicanery, social indemnity, moral atrocity were your everyday reality --right out there on the Avenue; all up in your face. I can imagine your Avenue, with the pimp, whore and racketeer, "who really believed what the white man said about him." I can imagine the psychic tension you must have felt walking those streets, clutching your Bible, knowing what the white man said about you, searching for something holier than the pimps, whores and racketeers, the life you all led and the games it must have played on the dreams of your childhood. And even most of those dreams were blocked, shattered or discarded before you realized they existed. The unconscious in the white world aborted your American dreams, your human aspirations and sought to continually blacken the spirit within you. Such were your days. America is ready, willing and able to discard my brother in a similar fashion. You and I know this.

My days in America began in the same blackened fashion. In St. Vincent, the only white people I saw were occasional tourists passing through our town in jeeps. White was a crayon color, chalk, a shirt worn on Sunday morning. The sand on my beach was black, my Prime Minister, mayor, teacher, pastor, my butcher, baker and candlestick maker were all black. Blackness --as a self identity, a definition, a limit, a vantage point, a hole, a prison, a paradox, a curse, a means-to-an-end, a cloak, a cover, a shield, a shed skin, a release from, an awakening unto, a profound journey through, a spiritual fulfillment of one's self prophesy, my greatest human virtue; black as such, was something I did not think about until I came to this --another-- country in 1985, at the age of nine.

Island children with enough security sleep sound and dream of The States --as everyone would say, with an inflected reverence reserved only for God and teachers. America's riches afforded a line to salvation St. Vincent would never provide. And those with a connection to that line were teachers on the island. With stories of material excess and opportunities island life limits altogether, the fortunate sons and daughters of St. Vincent --those who had money, influence, government jobs, attended the Anglican Church I did-- opened island eyes to human capital. If you had relatives, friends or enemies in The States, you were an angel in my childhood circle because you could give away old stuff or food to the starving, hungry, naked children in town. I had a grandmother, uncle and aunt in New Jersey who sent clothes, books, money or toys at Christmas, sent me access to a human economy most were too poor to afford. I was an angel, a giver, a teacher. I felt godlike. Vincentians are a poor people who work hard. But there is just so much 117 square miles of land can give back --even soil as fertile as ours. To my friends and me, The States grew God’s blessed seeds, was ripe with all the stuff a hungry, naked, sick child thinks will make them better. The States was paradise --the Promised Land. But when I got to New Jersey in 1985, I quickly realized paradise was not as advertised back home.

America had duped my innocence into believing materialism was commonplace, yet things were so scarce in my aunt's house. The rooms were small, there was no space to play, to grow, no toys, no cable TV, no VCR, bike, skateboard, remote control car. Besides that, there was no freedom. In St. Vincent, I could at least roam all over town, unencumbered by consequence, living and being myself. In Jersey, there was constant buzz about kidnappers, child molesters, rapists, murderers, killers, villainous foes with nothing better to do than hurt me. There was no talk like that in St. Vincent.

Hanging around my white schoolmates and soccer buddies provided ample opportunity to be in the America I saw on TV and in the movies --The States I always heard about. On weekends, I slept in their big rooms, played with their new toys, chose the foods I wanted to eat, rode in their expensive cars. White folks defined and lived the America my innocence had come to accept as the real America. Why didn't my black family live in that grace? Why couldn’t we afford that state? Hadn’t we lived comfortably in St. Vincent? On the island, my family’s name carried influence in town discourse and politics. Everybody knew and loved us. What was wrong with us in America? What was wrong with me? I didn't want to know, so I placed greater value on my white friends, reserving the best of my energies for them and their white world. I owed them that much for treating me to the dream of America. I disliked black people. They had nothing to give me. Initially, I gave them even less in return. My first six months in New Jersey were America’s common immigrant lessons in misunderstand compounded by a self-hate I could neither define nor deal with until much later.

I admit to having a hard time feeling the historical truth you wrote about, James. The omnipresent nature of white hate, is something, thanks to those like you, I will never experience. I cannot imagine a teacher, preacher or parent, not only telling me I can't do or be something, but going to incredible lengths to curb my human progress --with the purpose of protecting me, no less. Today, we are made to believe those days are gone. Well, you and I both know there are kidnappers, molesters, rapists, killers, villainous enemies of the state out there to keep me in their historical line. The black boy was once their chattel and should be kept in his chains. But they rarely talk nowadays or make themselves known --in that real, affective, undeniable, in-your-face way you knew the enemy.

I cried the first time I heard your Uptown Harlem being read. I didn't like the way the white, suburban boy was emoting your black, inner-city words. I was fifteen and green, just experiencing the realities a black boy encounters. Your reality and mine possessed more soul than the blandness the boy was laboring through. Decaying streets sounded like nothing to him. There was no resonance, no light going on in his head as it had for me. Hopelessness was an utterance and not the abomination you and I both know it is --especially to the young, asking God, day after day, “Why me, your most loyal servant?” Soon enough, I began discerning the meaning in your words. When I left for school, bent on arming my fledgling, human spirit with this generation's gimmick --education and the promise of a politically defined equality-- I saw boys my own age, and older still, drinking forties at the corner store. When I returned home, there they were, at their same stoop, in their same stupor, throwing dice, buckwilin or frestylin’; their aspirations as empty and devoid of sustenance as their malt liquor bottles, their gait defiled of purpose, hiding behind walls of false, male bravado and designer labels labeling nothing but their inability to label themselves; their tracks as circular and self-defeating as their days, no doubt were. The truth of your reality resonated in me with power and understanding. I could do nothing but cry. I rarely cried in life, going to incredible lengths to severe serious connections with people who seemed oblivious to what harm they could cause with their unconscious in/actions. But somehow, decades apart, you and I were linked. And I cried as you must have.

Then, I began feeling the meaning in your words. Most books I read, I did so with little connectivity. I read because I recognized the value and purpose, but found little love in the process. At fifteen, I was old enough to cognitively ready to understand what made me love those white people in Jersey so much and hate my own people with greater force. They had the materials that defined my vision of America. I was angry when I realized the few people who experienced that America. There were nights when I cried myself to sleep thinking about life’s inhumanity, my lacking connections to family and friends and an inability to figure out what to do about my cheap, empty black boy life. I could not relate my existence to most people because I had yet to make sense of it. Moreover, I feared what my anger would do while I emoted. Would I kill anyone who stepped in my way, anyone with a connection to my oppressor’s imposed ignorance? I certainly wanted to kill --myself especially-- but I knew enough to fear what America’s judicial system would do to me, what it is designed to do to every black boy: provide a comfortable, structured, institutionalized home. I wanted more than America’s home. I needed a place to live and be myself --whatever that means, whenever its meaning suits me.

There was still one thing that did not fit, one thing could not relate to from your writings.

“The fear that I heard in my father's voice, for example, when he realized I believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and have every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or had strayed too far from the house.”

I cannot imagine my whole Avenue conspiring to hold me back because I have never experienced that force. In the language of your father, I would have been destroying myself for believing in and setting out to prove my human capital at twelve, thirteen or fourteen. Now, my brother is the same age and facing the same choice. He and I were both discovered to be above-average students around the fifth grade. Basically, we are both very good at standardized tests, observing and finding patterns in texts, equations and human thought. Like you, he is not just an above average student, he has the potential to be one of the relatively few, conscious human beings. No one has had cause to hold him back, James, said, “No” to his dreams, nor had cause to make him feel less than worthy in any way. He's never --like most black boys, thankfully-- heard the word nigger uttered with contempt from some unconscious soul whose family knows no better than to teach trash to their progeny. You've heard the word. I've been pierce by it.

in 4th grade after scoring one for the spirit of '76
i was tripped by him and fell in the mud
he blotted the sun that day and from my stained seat i heard
NIGGER!
i was 4'8" he was no bigger
Nigger? me? simply 'cause i borrowed the ball during
the give and take of the game we had both agreed to play
Nigger? me? for trying harder, running faster, playing smarter than him
that was all for Nigger
what assured loser he was
as the final whistle blew that Sunday the Spirit of '76 won
I
walked off the pitch, proud, on high
my yellow jersey muddy and black
his uniform was still clean
no mud, no black
just pure white walking off the pitch
me, a winner
he, sure looking like a NIGGER!

Nigger meant enough for me to defend what little black consciousness I possessed in fourth grade. I was in America for only a year but I knew how deep that word was to be felt. Seeing nigger story lines on TV or something, I knew hearing the word meant action. I suffused my anger that day and have dealt with it on many occasions since. When my high school soccer team won a game and we were changing our clothes on the sidelines, a teammate asked: “Anybody see my necklace?” to which another teammate, without hesitancy --and with a giggle to a joke only he knew-- answered, “C'mon Oronde. We know you have it.” “How do you know?” I asked, wanting to add a motherfucker or asshole to cap his ignorance. Anybody who knew me recognized I did not steal, did not cheat and went out of my way not to cause harm or damage to anyone or their property. The rest of the team was cool. The motley crew that we were --with players from Nigeria, Trinidad, Greece, Poland, Russia, Guatemala, Spain, Ecuador, Brazil-- enjoyed each other’s company and our different outlooks on life.

Though I felt insulted, I said nothing and got no apology from my accuser when the necklace was found on the ground not too far from where his backpack and clothes lay. Even the kid who lost his necklace looked to me with apology in his eyes. He was pissed off at his unconscious, white friend. I could read an unspoken contempt for ignorance on the features of his face.

Another day, this time in the school hallway, my accuser approached as I was talking to a Korean girl. He grabbed my hands, turned my body to the wall and said, “Assume the position” --as if all black boys practice the turn-n-spread two step at home, hoping against hope, to be asked out by the law one evening. Again he giggled. No one else around us giggled. No one ever got his joke. To the rest of us --white, yellow, brown, red-- he was quickly dismissed as uncool, a geek out of touch. I never assumed racism as his motivation, not because of a black boy's self-hate, self-denial, some self-punishment or certainly not because I think racism is gone. I wasn’t even trying to be nice. My accuser was not a white racist; he was an unconscious, inconsiderate ass who knew no better. Anyone around him accepted this asinine idiosyncrasy. Like you and me, my accuser had rarely stepped outside his self and seen the world through another's eyes. Looking through another's eyes --even while we look at ourselves-- is the unforgiving reality of many a black boy.

Should I have confronted my accuser that day and fanned the fire within me? Most definitely. But should and would never occupied the same space in the metaphysics of my adolescence. Did and did not were more my companions. That day, I did not do what I wanted. I did what I needed to do, what my life's processed logic had conditioned my spirit to do whenever a possible conflict arose: I avoided it, promising to fight the fire next time. Avoidance of life was an everyday reality I once accepted with ease. Who needed the conflict of friends, family, love and all their circumstance. I had enough to deal with in my black boy mind.

I know better now, but when I was twelve, thirteen or fourteen, I thought all the fights in my apartment were my fault and hurled all my frustrations inward. I would hear my mother yell to my brother’s father, “Don’t bring my kids into this. I’m glad they don’t respect you.” In early adolescence, I rarely talked to anyone: no family, friend or teacher, not even God. Then, I hated the god within and could not understand why he pierced my days with tribulation and fighting. Didn't I deserve better? It's a wonder I never spilled blood without. Somehow, I found it easiest to bleed within. Not physically, though. And it was more clotting than bleeding.

Like your parents and your Avenue, my ailing spirit blocked off what I could do, what I wanted, what I thought, creating a space between it and my life’s wants and needs. Before I wanted a T-shirt, I didn’t need the T-shirt because there was always the possibility that my family’s poverty would prevent me from buying it. Before I wanted a piece of the homemade bread my mother baked every Saturday afternoon (bread I ate every Sunday morning with eggs and milk) I didn't want the bread anymore because, even though she never said “No,” I needed to maintain an emotional distance from her. I rarely looked my mother in the eye then, not wanting to feel my emotional withdrawal and cold attitude reflected in the water always glazing her eyes. I didn’t want to smile or show any happiness around her, lest she think she had something to do with it. I wanted her to wonder about me, question what unconscious acts she may have been doing to cause my emotional atrophy. I wanted her to suffer as I believed I was suffering. Were my actions right? No. But they were what I needed to do then. By not even thinking about certain attainable realities or relationships and doing nothing to progress, I forestalled a pain I was sick of constantly having to deal with. I refused to get hurt anymore, to ball up into the shell I often did, to hate myself for being a sissy and not facing the fear I knew was holding me back. Why bother? But like you said James, “It took rather more time for me to realize that I had also immobilized myself, and had escaped from nothing whatever.”

What have we escaped from since The Fire Next Time or the American reality your parents went to great lengths to protect you from even thinking about? What has every black boy had to employ to survive under the silent thunder of your fury's legacy? You said it best,

“Every Negro boy --in my situation during those years, at least-- who reaches this point realizes at once, because he wants to live, that he stands in great peril and must find, with speed, a 'thing', a gimmick, to lift him out, to start him on his way.”

At the beginning of this new century, what starts the black boy on his way? What reality has transpired "behind the words acceptance and integration?" Are we better for having heard and been swayed by those tired promises? What am I to expect for my brother? What is the world to expect from him? What is he to expect from himself? What new gimmicks have black boys had to employ to make it on the Avenue?

WIGGERS --'99

2007-07-04T11:24:00.000-04:00

There are those who see the benefits granted because of their whiteness. They know the truth about affirmative action is that it benefits college educated, white females more than any other segment of the American population. I've known active, reasoned, conscious white minds who sincerely try to see past race. I salute their efforts. The continued search for the real America begins and ends with those curious people. Invariably, too many of these searching souls take the easy path and latch on to whatever is popular in black culture, thinking they are learning about other people. Today, white folks call their searching brethren wiggers. They used to call the nigger lovers, race mongers, heathens, carpetbaggers, beatniks. Today's wiggers wear the urban labels, listen to hip-hop, talk slang and are supposed to be as unmotivated and lazy as the black pimps, whores and racketeers they emulate. Some wiggers repeat what the worst black people do because our worst is so close to what many of them are. The unconscious folks see wiggers as somehow losing their whiteness by trying to expand their knowledge. Expansion equals reduction. Hmm? What new math is that?

Impressionable wiggers, the ones who can change America for the better, don’t get a necessary balance. They end up around black folks not washed in the breath and scope of our cultural continuum, sharing what little --and only that little-- they know of themselves to wiggers who then think they know us.

To me, the ultimate wiggers, American’s best crop of young people, were those radical, left-wing white liberals or 1950s beatniks who played Ray Charles and Paul Robeson records, read Ellison, DuBois, Baldwin and other un-American literature; who learned black expression and changed America. Invariably, those folks ended up recognizing more about black music, art and culture than we did. I've seen those white folks. Talking to them is a trip.

I've known wiggers.
I've known wiggers as hard as Uncle Tom's shell
and more crack’d than the con-artist converted from Islam to Christianity while in prison.

I trip when I see these wiggers.
My heart knows not what rhythm to beat to these wiggers

I met one who attended Brown University.
He knew more about Peter Tosh, Marley and my Caribbean musical history than I did.
He had the Countryman soundtrack --a movie I had been thinking about for over twelve years but, for the black life of me, could not remember by name.
He offered me pot and told me of his plants in the Virginia woods.
He carried bongo, djembe and conga drums in his Volvo station wagon and gave me the name of a shop in Boston which got drums and clothes straight out of Dakar.

He asked: “Do you like Senegalese music as much as me?”
I didn't answer. I'd never heard Senegalese music.
He never mentioned race relations, but he thought he knew how to relate to me.
He was growing dreadlocks and my earthlocks had been growing for three years when I met him.
I could see he wanted me to talk back but I had not learned how to talk black --not the black of his Ivy League scholasticism -- not the black I had never learned.

My heart knows not what rhythm to beat for these wiggers.
I take consolation in believing they are beating on the sustained, human rhythm in themselves.

Not every white person who tries to better him or herself by learning black culture is a wigger. Not every black person in a European history class or who marries outside the race is a sellout. We should all try to expand ourselves by learning everything we can about anything and anybody. The world is my culture. I base my soul in my black conscience but I am open to light from anywhere. The white man is not my enemy. He can be when I lay silent and let him be. More often than not, I am my worst enemy and always have been. I have to convince my brother that life is not the half-truths and distortions the Commercial Barons, their Internet and Government Infotainment Complex lays out for him to see and hear. There is more information, more music to be heard out there on the fringes, beyond popular acceptance.

I’ve heard fringe music and been moved by fringe folks. Their sound augments the disharmony saturating pop culture. I’ve seen works by Baccaccio and Dali, Jacob Lawrence and Van Vechten, spent a summer reading the Chang Tsu, learning about the wei, talking about the similarities between Song Dynasty Chinese landscape paintings and the gardens in the middle of Persian rugs. I’ve heard sound from Peter Frampton to Fishbone, Elvis to Eminem, Lionel Richie to Limp Bizkit. I wonder if Fred Durst has ever heard Ellington’s Sentimental Lady or listened to Louis Armstrong preach with his trumpet. Has he heard Ella make a wreak out of Mack the Knife and turn it into an American classic? What about Miriam Makeba, the Mighty Sparrow, Baron or Hugh Masekela? They play black music.

I’m sure the African pop, Caribbean soca or jazz classics would only make Bizkit’s limp music stronger. Maybe Fred would temper that white boy angst of his when he hears Masekela woe about predicaments more damning than waking up one morning with a penchant to break stuff. I’ve wanted to and have woken up to break shit just because... But more than anything, time, patience and thought have learned me how to deal with my black boy anger and channel the energy into something more useful than destruction. I ain’t limpin’ on Fred’s usefulness. I still like the boy’s energy. He can be shaped. He’s got enough sense to get with Meth and Redman, so he understands something about the wei in the Wu. And if he doesn’t have a clue, at least he’s trying to vibe. There must be some humanity beneath the maze of tattoos.

Lone Wolf

2007-04-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

Tonight they dance up and down Hillsborough Street
As they did the other weekend and the Tuesday before that
The drunken resolve of the young and unclear, too boozed up too early in the work week
Keeping me awake

Downstairs, in packs of five or six, they howl and call
And my first thought is: “They are not black kids.”

My roommate stepped out ten minutes ago
Must be a basketball win
She could be downstairs too

I’ve seen her rant and rave, heard her scream, carry on and misbehave
But even she will never howl, not like what I heard
Even if it’s alcoholic reverie
To hear the pack downstairs howl
I am jealous
I remember the wish when I was young
That for a second, a minute, an hour
To be white, for just this
To howl free without reason
To howl without fear
Not alcoholic gusto
Just ‘cause you know deep down the world is yours
Noise is yours, air is yours
And tired ears readying for next day work are yours
You own them like all else

No, they couldn’t have been black kids howling
I am sure and dismayed by my certitude

And as if to punctuate my thought
On tracks cutting through campus
A train whistles aloud in answer to the kids I know are not black
It bellows power, knows it owns the track
The train commands space, owns my mind
For a second, the train is all to be heard
It too wants to be white
To howl and own the night

I sit in bed sober, still
Quietly resolved to what may have been my thoughts
About the drunken white boys
Or maybe I was thinking ‘bout howling or whistling loud
Or barreling down my own tracks with a crowd behind me full of noise and momentum
Crash landing in a moment of care-not

And I know that while I am in here thinking
There went a second, a minute and hour where I forgot to howl

SOUNDBOMBING

2007-03-22T14:12:00.000-04:00

The sound quality heard in the American music has gotten better. The sound systems have become more exacting, portable, affordable, more open to all. And we will always buy them. But why do we need newer, more complicated systems? The problem with America has rarely been the system. The American dilemma has always had something to do with the music we've been sold. Much of it sucks. The names change but the overall quality has deteriorated. Today, you have to know exactly what you want in the record shop or you will lose track of time and end up settling for some sound you don't need. Every record has digital quality and every company has done enough market research to make us believe there is soundness in every CD from every artist.

Most records played on the radio lack organization, musicianship, direction and purpose. I'm not hatin' on Radio and Record who simply play what is demanded. The buying public has lost the quality to express the very best of their human natures; to strive for all we can become. Consequentially, folks don't expect exceptional quality from their arts or artists. Musicianship, craftsmanship, sonic convergence or controlled divergence is waning. I'm not a musician but I have a human ear. Humans can tell when something sounds good because we have an inner biology that connects us to sound and movement. Music seems to be going so fast, so far away from that inner biology, we are forgetting that we still need that primal connection. Not only because it makes our music better. An organizational principle or respect for scale and depth make us better. Attention to detail makes us better. The clean, clear, digital sound of critical thought makes us better. Lyrics that hit the core of us, that become our onions, make us better. The marriage of word and sound that attempts to get at the very nature of what it means to live in our time makes us better. What Mos Def has done with Black on Both Sides has made me better. Many of us are so far from our natures, so infected with gloss, make-up, money and shine, we don't know where to begin on our journey back to where the track skipped and the human melody started scratching... scratching... breaking.

When did the skipping and scratching begin? I want to figure it out, talk to my brother about it, about old school music and its application to the new school flava. No one else seems to talk to him about these links. If they do, their efforts are pathetic. Ten years ago, I tutored a high school junior who had no idea who Nelson Mandela was. Preposterous! The last political icon of the twentieth century was not recognized when I pointed to his picture. And it doesn't make me feel better to know that Harry Truman, Douglas Mac Arthur or Castro is not recognized either or that nobody cares about politics.

Nobody shows my brother that history is more than wars, dates and political victories. History is a progressive force leading to some better purpose. No matter what haters may think, America has always gotten better whenever there was purpose. Slowly, yes, but nonetheless better. No matter what ignorant people may assert, Americans, black and white, have gotten better in spite of our separate and unequal teleology. What has happened in the past forty years is that haters are losing justification for their assertions. Once, haters had a fighting chance in working toward the America they wanted. Racism, injustice, labor inequality, sexism was the status quo’s blatant reality. They weren't haters then. They may have been called carpetbaggers, nigger-lovers, radicals, union organizers, un-American in their activities but they were not haters; not to me.

Some blacks, like Leslie Alexander Lacy in his college days --when he teamed up with Jewish radicals at Berkeley to subvert the system, explore and express his inner dialogue-- or Paul Robeson at the height of his fame --when championing socialists ideals of egalitarianism, worker rights or the human minority's right to live the lives God meant for them-- were denounced by the American system. Then, the growing government propaganda machine made the nation conceive of these men as abnormal when the two were the most actualized, normal --in what it means to live in a democracy-- folks alive at the time.

The two asserted their right to question America’s economic and social policy, authority and decisions. They agitated the Barons and congressional representatives to be conscious of their obligations to all people and to the nation’s championed legacy of continual progress. In their very actions, Paul and Leslie lived America. They were intelligent, well schooled, profoundly educated BYG Pro men. Both had comfort and leisure, not only in the economic freedom their family or their genius provided. They also lived an American freedom, a human freedom I wish I could see expressed more in black folks who now have even more social comfort, leisure, power and access --especially the ones influencing my brother.

They, us, me and you, black consciousness and human progression have all stalled. Who wails for Paul today? Where is the soundbombing? And my brother is waiting in limbo for a song we no longer wish to or are incapable of hearing.

There is a problem out there.

Black Like...

2007-02-19T14:14:00.000-05:00

Black like sand is infinite
And ice flows in rivers that once ran in clouds

Black like night is a dandelion rising in the noonday sun
And blue is the final flame of the cool dung

Black like coal is hot diamond on the hand of a young couple promising eternity
Black like time is never done

Black like on and on
And every sum was a black one
Black like me

B-Ball for the B-Boy

2007-01-30T16:37:00.000-05:00

My brotha's always got some new b-ball move to show me. I try to tell him, “Less flash, more substance,” but he misses reverses that should have been lay-ups, turns over crossover dribbles that weren't necessary because I purposely left the lane open. I wish he could play on a team with a coach and a system. I know he wants to but my mother can't find an organization close enough to where they live. Anyway, my brother is like me when I was twelve: he rarely leaves the house because he has fallen into the stalled routine of expecting little pleasure from his leisure. But unlike me, who had an inner turmoil I was forced to battle or an organized team to play --to vent-- on the weekend, my brother has no mechanism to surreptitiously learn life through the game of --and not the consumption of-- sports.

I want to tell him of my days in college where there were specific offensive goals and nonnegotiable defensive responsibilities on our 120 x 80 yd soccer field. Our playing surface was too big not be organized. Run, run, run or come out of the game. Try, try, try or sit on the bench, never to be subbed in again. Those were the simple rules the team lived by. I want him to know of the days when coaches were the stars and systems were the paradigms. Adolph Rupp, Martin Luther King, Bobby Knight, Bill Parcells, Malcolm X, Casey Stengil, Grambling's Eddie Robinson, Pat Riley, Roy Innis, Jim Valvano, Dean Smith. The coach was the leader of the team. Martin was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Malcolm was The Nation. Dean Smith was North Carolina Tarheel blue. Jimmy V was Wolfpack red.

Now the players, even on the high school level, are everything. The teams, cities, even the games don't matter anymore to a generation taught to focus on team clashes as a two-player, gladiator-style circus show. NBA telecasts buildup conflict, trying to make better television. NBC and TNT know human need. They also know the American audience is in a paradox of being in great need of conflict many don't want to go through conflict to get at. The Commercial Barons who sponsor programming don’t want angry consumers. Angry consumers don’t spend money. Sports serve us well these days.

The more sporting --open-- the country has become --coaches letting players sport mazes of tattoos or wear platinum chains even their scholarships cannot cover-- the narrower our society’s focus. I don't have a problem with tattoos --I have one-- trash talking, showboat dunking, celebrating the sacking of a quarterback with a 30-second commercial for a player's off-season dance studio. I don't mind individual expression. I do mind that tattoos take focus off the amount of off the ball running Allen Iverson must do. I mind when a player --as happened in a New England Patriots football game not too long ago-- celebrates before the play is over and the other team advances the ball for a first down or a score. I mind when there is not total focus until the game is won. I mind when my brother surreptitiously learns these things.

For an adolescent with little focus to begin with --when there is so much to distract him-- imagine the problem. Imagine the graver danger of not being aware enough to recognize the problem and then do something about it --in a time and with tools no one but you are equipped to use (but without the conscience necessary to use them wisely.) And all this in a Me!Me!Me! American culture looked upon by adolescents as being common knowledge yet hauntingly unfamiliar because they have yet to play the game. Many are still children, with a child’s social outlook on life. Unfortunately, too many of my brother’s peers buy into the mess we call life because the mess is now marketed directly to them. Too many free themselves of their childhood dependency yet fail to realize the freedom it takes to operate within a structure, a defined system and with parents or coaches who actually care. Far too many have yet to know there is no Me! without WE!

MELODY

2006-11-25T20:13:00.000-05:00

Middle C
Repeated pattern
Melody
Mi corazon
On the baby grand
Only octaves change
Trick the ear
Melody
Her tune, my reason
My mind, her time
Like a metronome
Steady
Always
Tic, tock, tick, tock
With the constant C
Tic, tock, tic, tock
Melody
On the baby grand
I hear Melody on the baby grand
Our binges on the baby grand
Hour changes on the baby grand
I hear
Syn-
Copated ranges on the baby grand
In octaves
Changes
Trick the ear
Melody
Middle C
Mi corazon
Repeated pattern
Metronome
Tic, tock, tic, tock
My heart is a constant
Home is my Melody
Middle C
Repeated pattern
Melody
Mi corazon
In octaves
Repeating
Like a metronome
Melody on the baby grand
Always bringing me home

SEX STORY

2006-10-24T08:32:00.000-04:00

“You gonna talk or not,” my buddy egged. I wanted to tell him that sex was not as it seemed. It was hard labor. And not just in bed. Sex took place outside the room. It happened the day you and your lady spent five hours talking on the phone about nothing in particular. Sex happened when you told your deepest, darkest secret and had no reservations about the revelations. Sex happened when you called your woman afterwards and joked about the fart you made or the funny grunting she did. It happened when the two of you walked down the street and you reached for her hand first and held on, not to claim your prize in the face of other men, but just to feel her touch.

All those walks downtown, the theaters, the parks, the shops, the phone calls, the letters, the bedrooms, the bras, the latex, the summer heat, the practice, the play. I didn’t have sex with that girl. Yes, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I was no longer a virgin. According to my friend, I was a man. On the other hand, I longed for the emotional commitment I knew deep down would have given the experience more weight.

The girl and I cuddled and caressed in the shower after each session, but what did that do? By the fourth or sixth time that first week, the whole thing became mechanical. Get undressed. Touch each other. Get hot and heavy. Insert penis into lubricated vagina. Push against her body for sixty plus minutes. Collapse on the bed from fatigue after she screamed for the umpteenth time. Dry up the wet spot. Cover my body. Adjourn to the kitchen. Re-hydrate. Eat something. Shower together. Repeat process if feelings arose again. Truthfully, I had to admit what I had done was a mistake. At seventeen, I was not ready for sex. Glad to have done it, but not ready for it. It was too much too fast.

In one month, I had my first steady girl, first date, first kiss, first time. Too much for my own situation. Performance anxiety had tightened me up. The same fears gripped me every time we went at it. Not once in all our sex-capades did I...um... Nothing came out. Whatever was supposed to be released from the moment was still bottled up inside me. No doubt she enjoyed that. We’d lay down hour after hour, me slipping in and out, she moaning, me not getting off. My sex was for her and not with her. It became a play. In bed I acted the part of lover. Out of bed, I didn’t feel like doing it anymore. I walked off the stage, turned the lights off and never visited her theater again.

White Sheath/Black Sword

2006-09-09T08:08:00.000-04:00

I am right
You are wrong
In my world we get along

You are weak
I am strong
In my world we get along

In my world we get along
In my world we get along

You are right
I am wrong
In your world we get along

I am weak
You are strong
In your world we get along

In your world we get along
In your world we get along

We get along
We get along
Weak
Strong
We get along
We get along
Right
Wrong
We get along
We get along
Right?

Wrong

BRAVEHEARTS

2006-08-18T06:34:00.000-04:00

A college educated friend once asked, “Why don't we have any William Wallaces in black history?” (I repeat, a college educated friend.) We had just seen Braveheart and were in awe. For a second I thought, “Yeah, where are the William Wallaces of black history?” Then it occurred to me, we have had brave hearts, ever since the first shipload of restless and defiant slaves were planted on the American soil. Paul Robeson's heart was brave and larger than life. Nat Turner? Like Braveheart, Nat stayed in the bog, plotting, prepping, and when ready, ran with the knowledge that he may never get to strike down his oppressor again. Like Wallace, he was captured and killed but his spirit was never taken. No spirit can be taken when it has freed itself from its own tyranny. James, you saw this. I see this now. Now I want my brother to see it. I fear he never will because it is becoming that much harder to remind people of a past which seems even more distant with the speed of change. And there is no love being cultivated for all that can be learned from it. Love for the past is past. The glory of our black past was reborn with you in the sixties and may die with me in the middle of this new century.

Somehow, I must get my brother to see that freedom comes in many forms and its denial will become more subtle the more he grows. The further he gets from the past, the more toys and tools the Barons demand he must master to make it in the new age, he will feel disconnected to black struggle in America --in the world. I felt disconnected in the late eighties and early nineties when hip-hop brought black consciousness to those willing to listen. Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, X-Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, early Latifah made us think about the mental prisons of black persecution and the continuing war for personal liberation. But I was too seeped in self-hate, too blind to my black conscience, unable to act on what the universe was doing. But I am no longer one of the blind. I see the war now.

I must teach my brother to wage war, for inactivity in a war against the conscience. Wage war within himself so he will not have to shed blood without himself. He should never go gentle and quiet not when the world is more awake and still buzzing with inequity. He should toss and turn at night, analyze his light and wimpy nightmares to rewrite his darkened day mares. He must learn to utilize the techniques and tactics of survival and revolution. Information is everything. Learn. Learn languages, travel, soak up the world's sorrow songs and let the human melody move him to dance upon his pegged legs and blackened soul. Like Braveheart, he must honor the Father. Honor thy father's memory and live for everything He and all the good His minions stood and died for. Organize. He should take stock of what needs to be done in the name of charity, goodness and mercy and let the three lead him through all the days of his life. He should never wither, succumb or live the life of the living dead. He should fight for his time before he does time for his fight.

We are all meant to be dead and buried. Not all of us have the means to live. But we are each blessed with the capacity to learn how.

spirit of '76

2006-08-07T23:59:00.000-04:00

in 4th grade after scoring one for the spirit of '76
i was tripped by him and fell in the mud
he blotted the sun that day and from my stained seat i heard
NIGGER!
i was 4'8" he was no bigger

NIGGER? me? simply 'cause i borrowed the ball during
the give and take of the game we had both agreed to play
NIGGER? me? for trying harder, running faster, playing smarter than him
that was all for NIGGER

what assured loser he was

as the final whistle blew that Sunday the Spirit of '76 won
I
walked off the pitch, proud, on high
my yellow jersey muddy and black
his uniform was still clean
no mud, no black
just pure white walking off the pitch
me, a winner
he, sure looking like a NIGGER!

whatever IT is, IT will be

2006-07-29T10:10:00.000-04:00

If we take the time to sit down in the quietude of our honesty, accepting that we are only human, bound by all our faults and fissures. If we can accept that we see only as far as humans can, have done all that humans have done, still do all that humans do but are in no way beholden to all that human knowledge except to say that we can use it to make a better day than yesterday was. If we can deal with our human pain to achieve our human pleasure, then we will be closer to truth’s idealized it --on levels we may never be conscious to.

But the process to it begins with the knowledge that there is an it for each of us and an it that can be created by all of us. Teachers reminded me of that it. Coaches made me practice to play with that it. My mother fought the men in her life for it. My brother's eyes hunger for it. In some ways we are bound to it, oppressed by it, sold to it, mired in it. But it also has the capacity to deliver us from its clutches. It wants us to be delivered from its clutches. Its whole purpose is for us to be free of it. James, I think about my brother and know that our connection to him is such that he possesses the material to take it to the next level. And it may not be the damn race thing. Whatever it will be for him will be higher than it was for you and better than it is for me. Right now, I feel glorious to have been touched by it, been opened to it. I know you must have felt the same force while watering the hellfire in the inner dialogue it always brings.

James, in order to reach my brother, I have to establish a necessary discourse so we can talk about whatever will ail his soul in the years to come. Without a point set where he can meet me with or for anything, I will have severed the line from you to him and your legacy will continue on the tangential, misinformed, undeveloped, inhumane, clogged and dispirited highway of my time. There are no speed limits here, no rules, no lanes and no cars for my brother to knowingly pack his emerging BYG boy selves. Will he want to drive on this highway? Will he bother to get his license?

We must find some cars to steer us back to it, lest we want to stand in the middle of this empty nakedness. I fear we don't have the tools to know we are naked, don't give a damn nor do we understand we once drove on this piece, wore clothes we made ourselves, looked dignified in our threads and were once united in a common destination. We didn't have that many good suits and the materials were not as comfortable as the blended fabrics of today’s fashion but we were never naked. Like Adam and Eve before sin, we were unashamed of our nature. Black folks have never accepted our American nakedness for we understood why all had come to pass. And we always fought our masters and false gods to grant us the clothes they would want to wear in our predicament.

James, predicaments are part of life's lessons and we derive meaning in our studies from our dealing with them. I know history serves as a reminder of how far we have taken the meaning in our circumstances with each other and with ourselves. I know I mean nothing to people I choose not to hold meaning with. I know I am fuller for holding meaning with you because you found meaning in a black boy who wasn't supposed to learn fulfillment. I know I have a clearer understanding of how the process to fulfillment works and what my duty is to it. I know you are right in The Fire Next Time. Somehow, you and I are stuck in the same social predicament forty years apart. I know, like you, I have to do something about it.

Me and My Son in NYC

2006-07-24T08:49:00.000-04:00

i didn't think he would get up at 4 AM to go to the airport but the kid's a trooper. it was a last minute decision to find a jetblue flight. i asked my three year old if he wanted to drive or fly. he said fly. jetblue ain't too expensive the day before. he hasn't seen grandma in 18 months. i haven't seen the city... my city, in way too long. i forgot a few things (i'll get to them). i also realized...

1. i should pay attention to the flight attendant's speech. it clicked, "i have to save my son if anything goes down." found myself, for the first time, reading...no, studying the confusing safety flyer in the seat pocket in front of me. how do they expect a normal person to perform all that pulling and strapping when the schnit goes down? everything i do on this trip is for him. we'll make a day in manhattan today because i want him to remember. i have faint memories of me and my dad at three or four. i held onto those pictures in tough times. so it's the staten island ferry, the empire state, all the tall buildings, food, music. create something between the two of us.just the two of us (sing the song here).

2. my sisters took my boy, his 9 month old cousin and me to chuck-e-cheese in the atlantic ave mall. place packed saturday night with hue and type and beauty and hype. black, spanish, indian, dominicans that could be black of east indian or peruvian, caribbean braids, blond dreads, pum-pum shorts, jeans, color, color, wow. and no matter how much adepose flesh is hanging, the ladies all workin' it... in chuck-e-cheese. the south's got some ubiquities --sweet tea, bisquits, gentile overtures-- but nada beats los sabores de nueba yol. bwaiiii, dem step it up ya-so. flavor you can savor.

3. and my mind advances in new york. a-train, f-stop, click, click, GO. i picture words. this is where a younger me found my voice and i am again talking in my head. new york crazy. the good bum. i stay here another two weeks, there'll be stories coming out. what the visual variety does to a scribe. even if you don't want to, the mind registers yardees in green and yellow sandals rocking the white mesh vests as their nipples hang out and the tan church slacks or the actor leon fronting a reggae band last night at the canal room (how old is that guy anyway?) or the thought that i might have seen mos def yesterday. i might have... my sisters and i were walking from the brooklyn children's museum and, at a stop light, a black pathfinder pulls up with the driver not sure if he wants to fo forward or not. the guy's looking behind waiting for something. i'm ready to say a few words because i'm pushing my boy in his stroller and my sister's got her son. suppose the fool jolts forward? anyway, we cross and at the next light, the same pathfinder circles around and i'm looking and looking and damn it, it sure looked like black dante drivin'. he grew up in that area. i almost push my boy to my sister and start running down the street... what if the G-O-D made that schnit happen, trying to let me know i'm on the right path? mos def two feet away from me at a street corner. the guy this whole blog is based on. the guy my book is referencing. the embodiment of what it means to be a black man trying these days. right there. the B-K. God working. the confluence of space and time. synnergy. i know i missed him and it may in fact have been some random dude, but where else in the world would i be thinking this, huh?

time to iron some clothes and get on the train. hope my boy don't get too cranky in the heat... lots of snacks. lots to drink... and time to think and thank the Lord i'm in new york, new york.

Don't push me 'cuz I'm close to the streets, to the beats, the bitches, the niggaz, the women, the children, the workers, the killers, the addicts, the dealers
the quiet, the livest, the realest and that's close
--Mos Def, Close Edge

LIFE NEEDS HELP TOO

2006-07-16T00:19:00.000-04:00

I've found that when moments converge, where life sends me indelible, heartfelt signs and portents, it is my spiritual duty to act. I say this with confidence because I have studied my life. Once I was too scared, too stupid, too black, too confused, too awful a human being to fully engage. From the fringes, I analyzed life in much the same way black boys have had to make sense of the American dilemma. I was wrong about my early conclusions. Life does care and has always provided for me. In fact, life wants me to win.

Life is in constant search for someone to outwit it, move it, expand and release it from the tyranny of itself. Life's so big, so heavy, so busy running and relishing the pain and pleasure of its days and nights, life cannot move sometimes. Sometimes it gets static, stalls or regresses to an earlier form. Sometimes, in its complacency, life unknowingly screams for help. Life is too proud, too omnipotent to admit its focus does occasionally skew or that its wants need redefinition. Sometimes, life needs helpers, aides, caretakers, coaches and teachers. Right now, life wants me to be a force to explain it.

My brotha's life needs guidance, structure, purpose, hope, discipline and a connection to his inner self. I had some of those skills when I was his age, others I've packed along the way. I often lamented as to why God had damned me to the confused, crazy life of a black boy in America. I remember teachers telling me I was a good person and that I would one day do something great. I rarely believed them and hated myself for obviously lying about some ephemeral goodness I never felt. If only they knew the burning inside, could hear the crackling fire ablaze on my right to feel the love and self-assurance in being young, gifted black and proud.

Through his gifts, JAmes Baldwin wrote about his black boy childhood in Harlem. Mos Def raps about the same black boy genius now, except his lyrics are updated to now and beyond. I've tried to find linkages to further sustain the connection between Baldwin, Mos Def, my brotha, and me. I’ve been writing again. Writing has been a continued expression of my inner, human discourse. When I forget my self, I refused to write. But now I’m following my passion again, wondering how the black boy experience in America has changed over the years. My days now seem automatic, as everything I sense inspires me to search for more: to keep on keepin’ on. My connection to life seems to be educating me again. I write here in the hope that James, Mos Def and me will be able to learn my brotha something about manhood, consciousness, his godly nature or open a fuller humanity to him; for one day, he will be the only reason the three of us will have existed.

A WRITER : BORN THRU PAIN

2006-07-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

For the first time in my life, I was able to bind rampant thoughts in notebooks, on tape or diskettes, not letting them run my life. I liked arranging ideas, stressing one over the other --usually the good and the positive. While never discounting the negative, it made no sense to dwell on negativity because its primary service had been to keep me down. Although my down state allowed a vantage from which to measure my up state, upliftment was not negativity’s damning purpose. Through a patient, often boring, difficult inner dialogue, I bobbed above life’s weighted travails and saw land ho! That land seemed real enough to swim to. As a writer, I believed in my ability to swim, so I did. And I loved it.

They say that goodness in life comes to those who believe/ So I believe/Yes/ I starve to think/ And then I sink into the paper/ Like I was ink/When I'm writing I'm trapped in between the lines/ I escape/ When I finish the rhyme/I got love/ L-O-V-E...
--Mos Def, Love

Once, it was pain through which I interpreted life. I hated looking at the mourning mirror, never seeing the person I wanted to be and worse yet, having no guts to create that ideal. I got complacent and accepted my life as it was. Happy people were fakes, feeling something so alien to me then. I could not conceive of pleasure for more than a few minutes at a time and found it amusing not to smile, not to show outward signs of believing pleasure was possible. I don’t play that game anymore. I accept happiness for what it is --an equal extension of pain, a human necessity.

I wonder if I would be as open to all of life had I not dealt with pain for so long, so young? Of course I could have become a decent human being --moral and kind, empathetic and understanding, attentive, patient, courageous, just, wise. I don't know if I would have understood the virtue in having these traits had I not seen them for what they were and found them necessary enough to climb over myself to possess. I don't know if I would want all the world be in possession of these basic, human skills and understand how life comes to be in each. This understanding was not an overnight process. Understanding takes a whole heap of soul-searching, digging, discarding, moving malady, shaking and waking pleasure and pain. I still feel uncomfortable when malady visits in the form of angst, confusion, fear, superstition, or hate but not as much.

Malady smokes reality, skewing perception, narrowing conception to the darker side of existence. Through writing, I began to note the mirror’s other face. I was dead and had been reborn. As much as I didn't want to, happiness was pulling me in. I needed that tug on my days. Once the smoke cleared --and it cleared for longer durations the older I got, the deeper I dug-- I acknowledged that my history could not be divorced from the human being I was, nor the human being I was in the process of becoming. I had to eventually accept the person I saw in the mirror each morning. I had to follow his spirit for he had brought me through some shit and had earned my respect...

8th Light = Goal Model

2006-06-27T22:36:00.000-04:00

Now, my brother wants to follow in my footsteps; high school, full ride to college, the whole thing. And he can. My mother says he tells her he wants to be like me. He’s never said it in so many words but I know he sees me as a model of what is possible for him. I don’t want him to be me. He can be better. I hope that when he’s my age, he has blown me away.

I often wonder if he really wants to be like me --like I was at his age. Does he want to feel docked in his black psychosis, dismissing human contact as unnecessarily evil? Does he want to feel that everywhere he goes the world is whispering bad thoughts about him? Does he want to walk around with a tension that prevents him from looking another brotha in the eye, no matter the circumstance? Does he want to feel guilty for liking white women when all he wants to do, but never can, is love one black woman --his mother? Does he want to travel the negative spaces I once placed between my self and the world, seldom forming lasting relationships? Does he want to feel absolute sorrow when he realizes all the world is not perfect --his parents and himself included and that he must forgive? Does he want to be drowned in what all this unknowing attacks in the mind of a boy surviving the soul's search through the cracks in, of, and for his black manhood?

Or would he have wanted to be you, James, put down by every element of society; hounded by the pimps, whores and racketeers on the avenue, with their blatant wants; or have the fire and brimstone dryness of Christian morality preached to him only to come to the cold, damp conclusion that God and it must be relative --'cause white people, powerful people, oppressive people never practice the morality they want black people, weakened people, oppressed people to blindly follow. Would he want his future foretold before he ever wished to see it, his present denied because he couldn't deal with it, his past nonexistent because first, the world, so [then] he, thought it unimportant.

I wonder about my brotha, James. You were my light. I hope with him I'm shining true life.

You know who else is a Black Star? (Who?) Me
You know who else is a Black Star? (Who?) Me
You know who else is a Black Star, who we?
(And we) be shinin and shinin, when we rhymin and rhymin
We be shinin and shinin, when we rhymin and rhymin
Now everybody hop on the one, the sounds of the two
It's the third eye vision, five side dimension
The 8th Light, is gonna shine bright tonight
It's the third eye vision, five side dimension
--Mos Def, Astronomy (8th Light)

I CRIED YESTERDAY

2006-06-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago I sat down and cried. A grown man crying profusely. For two hours, I balled. When the sound got too loud, I put a towel over my mouth and bit into it like I was giving birth. I understand --on a level I have never felt before-- why I needed to cry, why the truth had to flow like some internal baptism. I understand how loud silence is and how much stuff fills emptiness. I understand why I had to get away from people, from myself, to stand in a space I am so happy to have finally reached, with tears I am already much better for having shed. I understand something I never could have before yesterday. I understand who I am and that I am linked to everybody who has ever come between my soul and its line to God. I am in complete debt to the saints, angels --visible and in, black, white, young and old-- that have helped me get to where I am. I understand that part of their purpose was to help me reach this understanding and I accept my duty to continue the process.

I am a giver; a giver of knowledge, a life coach, a teacher, no more, no less, no better, no worse than anybody who has --trying to or not, felt or unfelt-- imparted their substance on my being. I have a responsibility to teach that substance based on a morality or sense of duty absent from my lifetime, but nonetheless real because I believe it is in me. I must pass on what I know of truth and consequence to my brother or anyone willing to listen. My life may be finite, but truth is not. Truth is infinite. James, I accept this axiom as never before and refuse to sever the line connecting your truth to mine, now that I know all our understandings lie dormant in my brother.

After us? Our seed must perceive to be trees
Sprouting leaves giving breeze to the we who believe
I'm MC, which means I must cultivate the Earth
Straight back, straight facts, hard beats and hard work
I be the funky drummer to soften the hard earth/ Amen
Pray Allah keep my soul and heart clean/Amen
Pray the same thing again for all my team
From Restoration to Fort Greene and on out to Queens
Uptown to Boogie Down/ Yo! Just look around
Shook up the world like Ali in '63/ I'm reaching a height that you said could not be
I'm bringing a light but you said we can’t see/ Saw the new day coming/ It looked just like me Sunburst through the clouds, my photo ID/ I bring light to your day and raise your degree
The universal magnetic/ You must respect it
From end to beginning, breakthrough and living
Ever changing but sustaining magnificence
Building the now for the promise of the infinite
Building the now for the promise of the infinite
We believe in the promise of the infinite...
--Mos Def, Love

call to alms for the young and inspired

2006-06-04T13:57:00.000-04:00

make haste to the forest with your seed
kneel at the foot of the oldest tree found
uplift the buried treasure in the mounded throve already laid down
dig, dig, dig
to exorcise your early-boy fears
the skeletal remains full of worms will frighten
the petrified tear will look on as if doubting
I would still
dig, dig, dig 'til muscle aches and skin cries
when you find the black root
branched and dispersed to all ends of the forest earth
grab it and be anointed with a vision to farm and till your seed to full grace
i would keep digging
and do not fret
for yet you leave the forest your seed shall be
sheathed from the winter ice, spring rain,
summer heat, autumn's refrain of impending cold
your seed shall be saged in a coat of gold reflecting on you
and any fruit bares shall be the sweat of your brow
the spirit of your youth
and it will grow to shine on ancient wisdom's holy black truth

DEAR JAMES... LETTER TO THE BLESSED

2006-05-28T01:05:00.000-04:00

James, I am jealous of your ignorance to the future. There's so much you will never know. I would trade places with you in a second, if I could feel the connections to life that your generation and your time seemed to hold on to. You had counselors --not always good-- who experienced the same pains and knew how to deal with yours. And if they didn’t, their ignorance provided a point of departure for you.

The Little Rock Nine must have had counselors, activists, caring souls schooling them on not only what to expect on their way to and from school, but also what to demand from themselves in the white classrooms. I'm sure they were told to be proud of who they were, if not as black children, then as their community's exemplars or as national trailblazers. They must have known they were God's children; that the white, Christian people who cursed and kicked them, hit and spat on them, were the blackened American mess of a Christianity recognized as being both double-edged and hypocritical, but nonetheless worthy of clutching onto. The Nine must have known they were working for a higher cause, that they were themselves great. If they didn't, and only thought about getting a better education in a school that was more equipped to teach brighter students, they must now recognized how special they were; how much they lit history.

I'm sure my young brotha questions the light of his greatness. Adolescents question their veritable mediocrity. I did. I didn't want to be told I was smart because I knew the world was just seeing my outside. If they got a glimpse of the volcanic eruptions going on inside my black skin or heard what I really thought about their superficiality, their emptiness, their privileges, their inability to see and seek out truth, they would not have praised me. Once I began to notice how complex intelligence is, noticed the few among us who possess that consciousness, the small percentage of that few who employ it, the fraction of those employed who work for something infinite, I doubted, even more, any claims to my being smart. I saw how far I had to go to be counted among the blessed few. Furthermore, it seemed the ultimate aim of intelligence is not just to think but to produce action. I didn't act or cause people to act for some nobler cause. All I did was think too much.

Yes, intelligent people studied and thought, but they also sought to move men and women to do things, be things, go places they didn't think existed, be people they never knew they were. Look at the blessed whose gifts have no developmental ontology; the few who simply had it. Think of Mozart, Stevie Wonder, Confucius, Elijah McCoy, Mandela, and you, James. All you did was stay focused, organized, disciplined and continually tapped into your inner self. You found a line to your writing --your specific genius-- and simply followed it. And every time you penned, or Mandela inspired, or Stevie or whomever played their angelic melodies, painted their masterpieces, harmonized, moved in the rhythm of the Creator's grace, you all reminded us of the unrealized potential coloring us all --connecting us all.

SEARCHING FOR AGENT/PUBLISHER

2006-05-25T10:50:00.000-04:00

a few days ago, i read of a writer in england who'd spend the last six months or so living in the woods and chronicling his observations on life. why become a hermit? if you're a good writer with some cache, it's a great back story. wonderful attention getter. but then you have to follow up with readable material. i'm sure he'll do that. the point is, he got himself in the door and may soon be published. me? i'm outside the publishing world. sent hundreds of query letters out on material similar to the themes posted on this blog but no interest. i know the game. it's trial and error. if you catch the right reader, agent, editor on the right day, anything can happen. you also have to knock on lots of doors, publish articles, stories, poems in smaller magazines, journals e-zines, etc., build a resume. i understand the process.

i've been pleased with the response to this blog. there seems to be an audience willing to listen to talk on race, social betterment, aspiring to something beyond what we see today. the ideas are coming across clear enough for folks to accept them. i think people will be open to a more personal story on how these ideas came to be and what can be done to foster similar development in young people.

i'm no hermit. have no inkling to be one. i have written --a memoir on life observed from a black boy's gaze-- i write now and wish to get my foot in the door.

they say we're six degrees from anyone in the world. i'm here... an agent, reader, editor is out there. if you or someome you know is one or two degrees in between; if you like the ideas on this blog and think there is a greater benefit to them, help me connect with that reader, agent, editor. in the mean time, i'll keep trying, keep writing. and if anything happens, i'll keep you posted.

thanks.

THE STUDDED BLACK ATHLETES

2006-05-18T08:39:00.000-04:00

The difference from your day, James --and exactly why I hold the present, highly visible, more influential crop of inactive superstars accountable to my brotha-- is that athletes, like black style and every area of modern society has crossed over. Athletic-entertainers represent the black community as always but are now under more glaring lights. Their headlines dominate the nation's wont --one that has been created to fill a need we never address-- for negativity. Athletes have their box scores in the sports section, their salaries and ownership deals in the business section, their charities in the lifestyle section, while their scandals darken the front pages. My brotha rarely gets to see balance.

Once, Russell, Chamberlain, Robinson, Mays, and Ali shared the same newspaper space as Martin, Malcolm, Stokeley Carmichael and Robeson. It seemed they were all card-carrying members of the same union, orchestrating plays for the same team, working for the same championship ring. Black children, even if they didn't realize it, received a certain balance in that our champions of the holier life were next to the practitioners of what was possible when an even playing field was granted the black man. Black children saw proof they were great. Ideology meshed with practice. And when our athletic champions won, we found greater pride in our black identity. Our souls were strengthened.

In terms of what black folks can accomplish, the world has come to accept that we are unstoppable. Black strength, speed, endurance and intelligence --for it takes an indelible intelligence to make sport appear fluid and as unencumbered as our professionals do-- hold every major track and field record, NBA coaching, scoring and rebounding totals, MLB homerun marks, NFL rushing or receiving (Warren Moon has passed for more yards than any pro quarterback ever to play football) titles. International sports most celebrated athlete was a Black Pearl from Brazil nicknamed Pele. The black world is gifted on multiple dimensions, as our athletes transcend their sport to tackle music, TV and movies. I don't see white athletes even trying to do the same. I get the feeling they think being expressive is black thing; not for them. It’s as if black boys were tailor-made for this Information Age. We can do so much, so fast and adapt to any kind of circumstance because we have been forced to all our lives. Unfortunately, we can also be manipulated easily because our shifting nature grounds us to little too late.

Allen Iverson and Kobe think they can rap and actually released CDs. More power to them. Let their byg gifts shine. Big Willie can dominate the box office receipts and soundscan. Get jiggy baby, ‘cause you sho’nuf can. Tiger Woods! What else needs to be said about that PGA leader. He has accelerated faster and further than anyone in his field. He has become the Master's Champion. Let me repeat that for the unconscious: Tiger Woods has become the master's champion. Now imagine if Tiger learned not just how to play and beat the master but also how to teach the master in the same way our gloried champions have done. Think here. Think. Imagine if his entire generation and mine knew enough to accept and act as the master's teachers --'cause that's what black folks have always been since the days of Uncle Tom, Gone With the Wind, Beulah, Gimme a Break, Benson, Cosby, all down the line.

BLACK BOYS, FIGHT CLUB, DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS

2006-05-11T23:24:00.000-04:00

"... My brotha has always existed in that painful now from which America’s once fortunate sons and daughters rant and rave these days. The poor and oppressed have never had another state to escape into. Those with privilege and power have always been able to move between the past and the future, skirting the pain of their present existence. Why do rich people buy toys that remind them of their youth or futuristic appliances yet to be mass marketed? They do not want to deal with the emptiness that is always in the present; that of thinking they have it all but knowing they are lacking some unknown quality money and power will never buy. Colombine or Oklahoma City was not only about rage. Those human tragedies were about some special, privileged it white America no longer provides its fortunate sons.

The truth of America’s angry, white boy problem didn’t register until I saw the movie Fight Club. Then, it became obvious that American men --especially the white ones given the privileged positions in corporate America-- have used work as a means of proving their masculinity. Today, higher salaries are reserved for the more masculine, more dominant males. American society is designed to raise the white male to Alpha status, so they were always the more masculine in America’s changing design.

When Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club begins to see little truth in the mundanity of his office masculinity --as most under appreciated young men are wont to do-- he begins a warring, internal dialogue. The dialogue goes so far as to create two separate identities within him. One personality, Jack, is the all-American worker. He, like much of my generation, has never tested himself in a fight and is a practitioner of what he calls the IKEA nesting instinct --buying useless home furnishings and other products designed to define him.

"If I saw something like clever coffee tables in the shape of a yin and yang, I had to have it… I would flip through catalogs and wonder, ‘What kind of dining set defines me as a person?’ We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection."
--Jack, Fight Club

Though he is profoundly troubled, Jack remains the "calm little center of the world" because he has enough stuff to soothe him and has job keeps him busy enough to forget who he really is. He continues at his meaningless work until he meets Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden --the brutish, Hobbesian nature of Jack’s emasculation. Tyler is a survivalist. He refuses to come out of his cave because he sees the world as it was and always will be. He sees through the hypocrites who refuse to accept their animal natures, sees through society’s imposed bullshit, especially Jack’s created wants and needs. Tyler is one half of the warring white boys in America, the ones losing their Alpha male status in a society being forced --because the Barons now see that money can be ripped from non white communities too-- to colorfully exploit all its Avenues. America’s present white boy problem, especially for the quiet coeds who do not act on life in any meaningful way, became clear when Tyler says these lines.

"I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived --an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they're slave with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes,working jobs they hate so they can buy shit they don't need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars -- but we won't. And we're learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed-off."

It occurred to me that lifetimes of black boys and black men were made to settle for those debasing definitions --waiter, porter, shoe shine boy-- of an American masculinity they were cut off from living. Black folks have always had our own internal fight clubs. We are, indeed, among the strongest and smartest men to have ever lived. How else have we survived America’s racial onslaught? We have always had to portray two, three, four or ten thousand different identities to suit whatever vision our oppressors wanted to see. Unlike Jack, we learned to deal with an America that would surely kill us if we tried to express our displeasure with the status quo. The majority of black men have practiced hard --like trained monks-- to silence the screams and salve the scars brought on by four hundred years of mental oppression. The white boys killing their classmates all over America are now beginning to see what America’s fight club is all about. And the sad thing is many of them will never feel the brutal force black boys have always felt. Many of them are so weak they will never dig below the surface of that pain to see the great war as it persists for the wretched.

I say it is the duty of BYG BROTHAS to teach --like Martin and Malcolm had to-- our suffering white brethren how to handle the truth of America. If we are conscious enough, black boys will always be aware of the mental schism, split personalities, emasculation, the double and triple divisions in consciousness that America can bring..."

LETTER TO MY YOUNG, BLACK BROTHA

2006-05-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

"... I miss the play in the internal struggle of your emerging adolescence. First, the days when the ground seemed uneven, when nothing was possible because of fear, when the world was old and faulty and I was tired of living its blacker side. Then, I didn't want to ask, to try, to go, to do. Through opening up to life --walking on it, ingesting it, chewing it, spitting it out, asking myself its harder questions, honestly seeking answers, trying to make sense of those answers and the millions of new questions they brought up, grumbling internally, remaining humble -- my late adolescence became new and fresh. I dwelled on what was possible. Possibility became my best friend. We walked the Avenue in concert, protecting each other from what he and I knew was inevitable: harsh reality's infringement on my right to believe in innocence, to dream in ideals and search for absolute truth.

I want you to realize you have the right to struggle, that struggling in one of your adolescent functions, one of your needs, one of your roles, not as a black boy, but as a boy becoming a man becoming human. I want you to know the power in humanity when you live in a world that reminds you of nothing but your role as a consumer of information, material propaganda and the empty legitimacy of the whole godforsaken process.

I sometimes like to think we are society's illegitimate sons. America has never wanted to father an intelligent, articulate, determined black boy who understands his role in this --his society; in this --his world; in this --his time. Frederick Douglas was not meant to survive here. Booker T. Washington and DuBois were not meant to thrive as they did. Malcolm was not meant to live here --not the way he did. But they all wrote on life and became byg men in America’s games. They were all not meant to make sense of what they'd seen, just die in the unknowing consequence.

You wont believe the thing’s I’ve seen/ Far beyond your wildest dreams
I’ve seen chaos and order reign supreme
I’ve seen the beauty of the universe so gentle and serene
In seconds turn to violence and screams Like your heart is warring with your brain
Emotional or reason now which one do you obey Like, somebody’s calling you insane
When overwhelmed in bliss, bursting tears of happiness...
-- Spooks, The Things I’ve Seen

Like you, I was supposed to crumble, become part of my neighborhood fight club, posse or clic, end up as the clichéd, dead or imprisoned best friend of some future NBA or NFL superstar. When I was fourteen, and all the way through high school, I was sure I would survive life only if I got intense psychological counseling. I was too singular, too quiet, too empty. I affected people differently, made them think. That didn’t seem right. The weird thing was I didn't steal, never robbed, rarely lied or cheated. All I wanted was to feel a deeper connection to myself and to life. Where are the images of those black boys? I would have loved to see my emerging self represented on TV or in the movies.

Nevertheless, my grades remained good, I respected most of my elders, believed in God, tried to better myself and those around me. That still seemed weird. The even weirder thing was that I felt guilty for being good. Good seemed anomalous to whatever image I had in my head of a black boy in America. I didn't smile at black boys in Brooklyn because I saw an image instead their persons. I felt guilty for having white friends, hanging around them, for developing bonds with them, for smiling and feeling happy, for earning a scholarship to college while my white classmates mumbled about affirmative action, wondering how their middle class lifestyles would affect their financial aid packages. That guilt bothered me. I loathed my ingrained ignorance. Weird to think those were legitimate concerns but they were.

People have asked me how I survived Brooklyn, as if I am under the delusion that Brooklyn was as bad as I once thought it to be. During any struggle, life loses some security, stability or goodness. Days become awful when you think about them too much. In the middle of my adolescent becoming, I studied, listened, read stories of lives far more debilitating than mine.

In seventh grade, a teacher let me borrow her copy of Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy. The text told the author's survival of the affects of South African apartheid while clutching to his gimmicks --education and tennis-- and earning a scholarship to an American university. I looked at my roach and rat infested apartment with more appreciative eyes. At least I had four walls. Kaffir boys in South Africa didn't have a floor to walk on. At least I had my health, running water, food on the table. Unlike Mark, I never had to scurry through garbage heaps looking for my next meal or school clothes, never had to dodge police bullets while trying to get a book from a burning library. My life wasn't perfect, but I had it good compared with much of the world. There were black people in South Africa wishing they had my life. An adolescent Mark Mathabane banded together with wishful blacks in Soweto to fight for the right to learn the truth about themselves. Young black people, active and inspired. Right on! Kaffir Boy was a timely revelation.

Richard Wright's Black Boy continually reminded me that the past was full of boys wading through confusion, physical, emotional torture and psychic dismemberment more hands-on and purposed than anything I would ever know. That connection made me think I was not alone. Now, when I read your eyes I see that --as smart as you are, as brilliant as you will become-- you don't know enough from whence he came. And there are not enough saints or angels walking the Avenue to show you where you are going. You do not feel the line that connected me to Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, DuBois across the Atlantic to Mark Mathabane, Ezekiel Mphelele, Chinua Achebe. I know you will probably inherit the black boy's seventh sense and realize the universality of your story, your suffering and your triumph. I know the connection will be made but what happens in the interim?

I’ve seen true genius too often allude the meaningless appreciation of this mediocre nation/I’ve heard the mindless repetition of empty words without tradition
Turn original verbs into submission I smell blissful ignorance but I guess it wouldn't’t be right If I said a blow was like a baby pipe
There ain’t gonna be no revolution tonight/ Half my warriors are high as a kite
They lost all their fight And I’ve tasted the bitter tragedy of lives wasted
And men who glimpse the darkness inside but never faced it
And it’s a shame most’a’ya’ll are following sheep
When deep within the darkness you’re falling asleep...
--Spooks, The Things I’ve Seen

Young brotha, the road to your self is tremendously empowering. Black boys were once shepherded through the process by elders and a community that protected our innocence. "You don't want to drink from that white fountain," a Southern mother might’ve said, "the water tastes funny." I remember listening to Anasi stories told by my neighbors in St. Vincent, remember repeating the moral fables to my friends whenever the town's power went out and we were in the frightening dark. The humans among the whores, pimps and racketeers on the Avenue told us the truth about a world that fed lies to the black boy.

I was never given direct instruction on how to deal with life in America 'cause my parents were busy working, surviving and dealing with the forces bent on keeping us running like the roaches and rats in the apartments we lived in. When I was troubled, I wished they had talked to me, prepped me. But they didn't know. The America dilemma was troubling them too, as Im sure it's doing to you..."

TIME, (To lighten up this Blog)

2006-05-04T22:50:00.000-04:00

Time passes
The wings of the willow
Time sleeps
The beds of breathing grass
Time flies
The tail of a comet

It don’t care to take the day’s first step
It don’t create life
It sure don’t sleep
And never waits for friends to share the afternoon with
It only works making mirrors for man to see himself or not
It’s on hand for man to pull himself along or not

Time don’t know what its like to near day’s end, to be refreshed
It ain’t even got time for itself
To be vain --in mirrors
To learn --by day’s end
To give life
And to live life again

Dear James, Re: Numbers Spell a Movement

2006-05-02T21:55:00.000-04:00

Numbers cannot count what I have superseded as a black boy in America. Numbers are descriptive tools used by those with no feelings about the complexity in human relations. Maybe we are all forgetting that and we shouldn’t. Human beings created the machines that are numbing us with their numbers. Numbers are an inhumane means of charting our ends. There are no colors or individuate human truths in numbers.

... nearly half of America's largest cities is one quarter black /That's why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack/ Sixteen ounces to a pound/Twenty more to a key/ A five minute sentence hearing and you no longer free
Forty percent of Americans own a cell phone/So they can hear everything that you say when you ain't home/I guess Michael Jackson was right, you are not alone
Rock your hard hat black 'cause you in the Terrordome
Full of hard niggas, large niggas, dice tumblers/Young teens in prison greens facing life numbers/ Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients Young bloods can't spell but they can rock you in PlayStation/This new math is wipin' motherfucker's ass
You wanna know how to rhyme you better learn how to add/It's mathematics...
Do your math...
--Mos Def, Mathematics

Americans have to talk about the numbers though. Black folks have to be aware of the patterns numbers imprint and the futures they spell for us. The future is a numbers game not a moral wish. Wishing is for people without the power and influence black folks have in America at the beginning of the twenty first century. Jabbing at and wishing for a possible future is what we did up until the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society. For hundreds of years we took baby steps, waiting for the master, boss, President, the goddamned nation to see and hear us. The process was as slow as the speed of relaying information to hear it. But the relay systems are no longer slow. The world operates at the speed of the microchip, the e-mail. The conscious among us should be able to use this to spur change.

Today, a new idea is soon the old paradigm and ways of perceiving the scope of change are obsolete before they are even implemented. In the interim --which is always instant-- no idea gets fully developed, no paradigm fully reviewed and tested. In the interim, there is no societal design, no direction, no thought, no discourse and certainly no action. There is no more popular thought for a social design through which to see race and its influence on us, and our actions. And it doesn't have to be race through which we see a better life. I often think that race was a metaphor in God's dialogue with man. We should all --conscious Americans, relative few that we are-- know that by now.

Class struggle, poverty, power, access, the war on labor unions, worker solidarity, the poor and defenseless of America were the impetus for the Civil Rights Movement as well as the independence movements, student movements, feminist movements of the mid-to-late twentieth century. But those movements are dead, right? They have been killed under fifty years of government orchestrated, business propaganda. However, the moment we accept that race, class, power, access, independence or feminist concerns do not still exist, and, furthermore, refuse to at least consider an inner dialogue about them --or any of civil society’s democratic wants and needs-- that will be the moment we implement the design of our final destruction. In the interim, we should endeavor to do something.

A people cannot suddenly get rid of the thing which has defined them --struggle in the search for a better societal design. History doesn't work well like that. There will be chaos in an indefinite society and no one will recognize why because the very thing they have thrown away --the means of arriving at the problems-- is the thing that is to save them. Even poor, white racists still believed they were superior and justified in their inequity towards blacks. As they got lower on the socioeconomic ladder they never threw away their whiteness or their willingness to defend it. Poor, white racists still knew what being white meant, even though the perception of whiteness in based on money and possession they didn't have. Why then, should black folks who have gained access, money and possession moving up the socioeconomic ladder, throw away the continual search for betterment --such an integral part of our un-American identity.

Folks need to attempt dialogue again, engage in meaningful societal discourse. And I don't mean just black and white. The dialogue is especially necessary between black and black, white and white, American and American because this country still is what it is. Black folks and other conscious Americans need to ask each other if we still think about race --still see a need for a better societal design? What, if anything, do we want to do about it? How do we start our mission? Who will be the leaders, if any? Who will be the niggerati, intellects, the foot soldiers? How will we recruit members? What will be the criteria for membership in the new movement? And most important of all, is the whole damn thing necessary?

Dear James, RE: Future of the "Race" Thing

2006-04-29T22:25:00.000-04:00

"James, my friend, we, black and white, Jew and gentile, young and old, conscious and unconscious Americans are all in some freezing hell hole history never wanted. I get the feeling the world is blazing and dropping minds around us but we are numb to the heat. We have no legs to stand on, cannot even be freed from our minds because our minds are busy escaping wants and needs it would never create if left to expound on its own accord. Americans need not escape though. More than ever, we need to return to our mind's eye, to dig deep and see where history needed our society to go. If the destination was here and now, then lets have fun with our unknowing and, like children, enjoy the present. But there will come a time when we will all need to start digging to figure out what to do with ourselves; what is next for our younger brothers and sisters. Grown folks have always accepted that responsibility.

Digging for answers is not for the weak. That's why I hold hope for those who have suffered under history's reign, are suffering under some force warping all of us. I hold hope for the confused masses of disenfranchised, neglected, unconscionably poor folk out there. They have a strength which has yet to be defined under this new reality that grants them more access and a simulated feeling of connection to society.

Are you really poor if you have a Hotmail account at the local library? Is your culture without legitimacy if corporate controlled designers are mass marketing your wears and young, hip, with-it people of all colors and classes are crossing over to your style more than they ever have? Are you really oppressed if they got your people reading the evening news, hosting the Oscars, serenading the President at his inaugural procession? You might still be but you have to think about it more than your suffering people ever have. And you have to think even more when there is no meaningful discourse about suffering, poverty, race, class, war, human value or any metaphor history --as a force toward some definite end-- has employed for man to conceive of increasingly better societal designs. And you have to do this in multiple dimensions of crystal clear sound and hi-definition imagery because that's the only way you have been taught to see La Bella Vida. And you have see this beautifully flawed life through mechanisms and paradigms no school is equipped to teach because education is just now being given the tools necessary to simulate this new age. And you have to do all this because you know something is wrong. You know schools, churches, communities don’t exist to pass on anything about a society spiraling out of control, where those institutions themselves are corrupted, co-opted and, by some new design, have little grip or have forgotten the roles they once played in alleviating your mental mayhem.

The conscious few in all societies refuse to have their minds corrupted, co-opted, co-authored by mindless propaganda. They cannot, however, and do not shuck propaganda or education. Instead, they shake up the two. They do not learn to live under systems. They question and reshape them. They are the mentally strong, the morally sound who recognize the depths from which they came and understand they cannot return to that space, nor will they put others into those havens. Since the world can do anything with mechanics and microchips these days, the conscious mind is the final frontier to conquer. My brother must recognize this, reshape how he is to see the world and further reshape every time his new shape is shaped again.

If we have indeed done everything in America, have all we want and see no need to fight for a virtuous freedom or equality in spirit rather than in legislation, then this time should be the march to heaven. If we have skewed off some historical need, ran out of some historical momentum, are off on our own tangential highway, human progress will posit signs, light bushels, send smoke signals, signs, signifiers and portents to remind humanity it is veering. Is taht what you see from the beyond, James?

If, in between and beyond heaven and hell, we are still unwilling to feel the portentous fires of revelation, then we shall --both black and white, damned and damnable-- burn in our escaping. And the fire next time will be now, since we no longer wish to confront the burning inside ourselves.

Yo Mos Def/ All right OK/ How you feel? Feeling great/
Whachu want? I wanna do it to death, whadup whichu?
You know my steel/ True indeed/ Say it loud/ Black and proud
Ain’t no time to hesitate at the gate/ Do it now/
Bustabus? What-a-gwarn! How you feel? Feeling great/
I wanna do it to death, whatup whichu?
You know my steel/ True Indeed/ Say it loud/ Black and proud
Ain’t no time to hesitate at the gate/ Do it now...
We got to do it, do it, do it.... Do it now...
--Mos Def and Busta Rhymes, Do it Now

does RACE matter?

2006-04-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

for a while i was bothered by the declining significance of race in america. what did the silence signify? i know now there are other issues involved besides skin color and economics and the new talk has to embrace a fuller knowledge --one i should be searching to define with an adolescent zeal. i've heard i may be --i don't know who these m-f-ers are-- out of fashion to use such "archaic", culturally derisive, colonial-power adjectives as "race" since they were used to keep us bickering with and about each other. in a globalized technocracy, will "race" matter? does bin laden care if you're black? will corporations give a shit about the skin you're in if you can spare a dollar for their product or a minute of your time?

WITH NOTHING MATTERS

2006-04-23T10:13:00.000-04:00

with nothing matters

I think
With nothing matters
I think
I am obsessed
With nothing matters
I think
What can best be described as the angst of the young, black and concerned
With nothing matters
I think
Wishing to be forlorn
I think
To be gone
I think
To be hangin’ with my homeys
Measured, meaningful, masters of men
Langston, Malcolm, Countee Cullen
James, my friend
Mr. Paul Robeson
Sing one more song for peace sake
Baritone full of sense
Sing it low sweet charioteer
Come on forth to carry me home

I am gone
I think
So far gone
With nothing matters
Big lips, small lips
High yellow, black as night
Can’t see the prize
True
Bugga boo eyes
Bet you didn’t think we’d still be talkin’ that jive
Hey Paul

"You got the wrong threads for this weather," the brotha said
"I’m tryin’ to get hot," I replied
"Three-pieced suits are dead," he said
"That’s how I feel, brotha. Pieced up"
"Spare a dollar?" he asked
"If you drop me some sense… brotha," I answered

(He looked confused
I walked on)
In limbo
I think
With nothing matters
I think
With nothing matters
I think
Looking back
I think
Confused
I think
With nothing matters
Coming forth to carry me home

DEAR JAMES...

2006-04-14T20:56:00.000-04:00

:...Parents are tired, frustrated and on edge because the authority they once had, the traditions they once knew of how to raise their children are being undercut by the Commercial Barons and a Government Infotainment Complex which has no idea what it does to the shells of boys and girls who crawl in and out of the world everyday. There are a select few, extremely unconscious people who run America. They don't lead, they run. They run us in their races, run us out of breath, then sell us water they've ciphered through their polluted machines. There is a problem out there.

There are places where TB is common as TV/
Cause foreign-based companies go and get greedy
The type of cats who pollute the whole shore line/
Have it purified, sell it for a dollar twenty-five
Now the world is drinkin’ it/New world water
Your moms, wife, and baby girl is drinkin’ it/ New world water
Up North and down South is drinkin’ it/ New world water
You just have to go to your sink for it/ New world water
The cash registers is goin’ chi-chink for it
Fluorocarbons and monoxide/ Got the fish lookin’ cockeyed
Used to be free now it cost you a fee/ Cause it's all about getting’ that cash money
Said it's all about getting’ that cash/ Johnny Cash / Rosalind Cash/ Give me cash/ Cold cash...
Cash rules everything around me
Move!
--Mos Def, New World Water

Maybe America's leaders cared more when they were blatantly serving the oppressor’s self interests? They still serve the Barons but now that the nation seems more democratic in terms of access maybe our representatives are in the midst of an intense, inner dialogue --one which they haven’t been readied to handle? If the Commercial Barons, Hollywood moguls, record executives knew what they were doing to the impressionable who simply want to be, they would be truly appalled and do anything to help the American predicament. But they can't. They're professionals. Professionals tend to their business, must attend to numbers and shuck their humanity. There is a problem out there.

There are no great men anymore. Well, I know there are, but they are not where my brother can find them; not where the black community once saw them rise and shine. With the exception of Farakhan and Al Sharpton --who are portrayed as inept, spouting head caricatures anyway-- there are no pastors, ministers, no deacons with a soulful agenda for black America. I'm not saying we need religious officials to define a black reality. Hell no! The best part of historical progression is that people have come to see they can each do more than they ever thought possible. Unfortunately, more and more people are realizing they don't need anybody because their techno-dens seem to bring everybody and everything to them. But every society needs great men and women as signposts for a better humanity. Every society needs people poking at it, pushing it in the mud so it can get up stronger. People need coaches who have been there, done that. There must exist a talented sect who have played the game and see that the only purpose in playing was to teach it better. Americans once taught each other better --even if it didn't seem like we did. But those days, like blatant racism an ingrained black inferiority is waning. Thank God. We should not rejoice, though, not throw away the baby with the bath water, not until a new way of learning our children has been defined.

We live in a world where getting virtual, getting close enough is fine; where unconscious people are misguided enough to think society is on the fast lane to hell because they --blacks, poor whites, yellows, reds, greens, gays, women-- got on the track and lowered the standards. Little do they know that we --blacks, poor whites, yellows, reds, greens, gays, women-- have always known they were going off track. The Barons drive us hard and fast because their time and powers are limited. They have to stay close to their inhumane line of reason. We don’t. Our lives belong to each of us and our legacies have the potential to be more infinite than the Barons’ limits. We have always tried to show them the infinite. It's only now that they --the unconscious, empty, power elite of every race and creed-- have been forced to listen, that they are seeing reality for the hell the rest of us have always known it to be. There is problem out there..."

LETTERS TO JAMES BALDWIN

2006-04-14T20:35:00.000-04:00

Dear James:

"The mind is an incredible weapon, ain't it? Put want in it and Americans suddenly need to buy everything Nike sells. Infect his mind with racist propaganda and the black boy is destroyed. Teach morals, decency, the knowledge that he will endure and the black boy wants to live --even without the Nike shoes. But he has to think about what all that propaganda does to him, argue with his understanding like some friendship always on the verge of dismantling.

A major problem facing my brother is that no public figure strives to define black consciousness in a society where blacks seem to have more access, more advantages, are sexier, braver, where more and more in our population are prospering --at least in some movies. Black folks’ collective identity is as diversified as it has ever been. Maybe the lacking racial dialogue is due to that. Maybe there is no need to define blackness to a generation where America’s children grow up playing with the same Pokemon toys, watching the same Foolish movies, the same TV shows, listening to the same music and most importantly are open to the same opportunities --at least on paper now. Or maybe the definitions are needed even more when white kids are dressing, singing, moving and acting --as they have always done-- black. (Whatever untruth that has always meant to them.) Black folks don’t want to go back to separate and unequal but what does this new American equality mean? For one thing I don't like the blackness my brother and too many young, impressionable people --some with sound minds and well meaning-- are emulating.

In and outside the black community many still se us as either bitches or kings/ niggers or queens. Many cannot see past the strong bucks or studded athletes in our black boy bodies and continue to see our sisters as welfare mothers, divas or concubines. Eye to eye many will never see black folks as their human equals. I have a problem with some white folks as I am wont to have a problem with the unconscious sect of any human population. I am vexed when those who copy our fashion act like a sanitized version of the most dangerous pimp, whore or racketeer I encountered on the Avenue --that poor, black soul who listened to the world’s words, lost hope and had no idea who they were as men and women under God. And when I act like the intelligent black man I think I am, many in and outside the black community have no idea how to counteract my nature. It sometimes makes me doubt the legitimacy of blackness as conscious thought in an atmosphere and a time where the embers necessary to burn my civic passion are limp, damp and cold. Thank God Mos Def is there to remind me.

Sometimes I get discouraged/ I look around and things are so weak/People are so weak
Sometimes... sometimes I feel like crying/ Sometimes my heart gets heavy
Sometimes I just wanna leave and fly away/
Sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself
Passion takes over me/ Feel like a man going insane, losin’ my brain, tryin’ to maintain, do my thing...
Sometimes I don’t wanna be bothered
Sometimes I just want a quiet life, me and my baby, me and my lady
Sometimes I don’t wanna get snowballed/ Sometimes I don’t wanna be a soldier
Sometimes I just wanna be a man/ But Umi says shine your light on the world
Shine your light for the world to see...
I want black people to be free, to be free, to be free
Want my people to be free, to be free, to be free...
--Mos Def, Umi Says"

The Black Man

2006-04-04T13:56:00.000-04:00

"Who is the black man?"

So you want me to answer for a lifetime of men... past, present and future… in the space of a few words... on one night.

Well.. the back man is whatever he wants to be whenever he chooses to be.

If a man seeks to understand that he has descended from a line of kings and queens.
That he is the first.
The first son of God.
The first man to walk the Creator’s earth.

If a man understands that he has survived oppressions, depression, prejudice, racism, hate and must wake up every day to do battle with oppression, depression, prejudice, racism, as well as his own self-doubt, self-hate and his own misunderstanding of it all.

If a man does all this earnestly, then he refuses to be defined, for definition confines him.

The black man is tired of confinement.

The black man...

I AM whatever I want to be whenever I choose to be.

2006-04-04T13:51:00.000-04:00

Intro

2006-03-31T18:22:00.000-05:00

First drop into the bloggersphere. I will try to drop some sense when I can. The price I pay is to reveal myself truthfully. I ask that you read thoughfully and respond in kind. My story is a common tale with an uncommon end. I've enjoyed the ride. I wish for others to take heed and learn from it. If you wish, read on...

In the fall of 1985, the systematic inculcation into what it is to be a black boy becoming a man becoming a human, being in America, had, by my estimation, begun. I was nine, with the wide-eyed, indiscriminant concerns of a child just six months in the Promised Land. America had always symbolized that hope to me and everyone else who ever talked about The States --said with reverence and a bit of ownership, especially if you had a brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, niece, nephew, cousin, friend or dead foe living there. And the reverence was not the play history books soon got me buying into; not the tired, poor, yearning for some nascent freedom gained by the transplanting of physical space. You can’t move to freedom, like moving from one apartment to another in the same building. And let’s face it, no matter where you move to, it will always be the same building --the one three cosmic blocks from the sun. You don’t magically gain freedom on the boat ride from Italy, upon seeing Ellis Island or getting off the plane at JFK. The rent does not automatically go down in America. I was free on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, my home. Six months in America had actually limited my freedom.

The States was about opportunity to get more than what the island offered. At nine, that meant TV, toys, food, shirts, shoes, money, jewelry --the material. Unfortunately, for most Vincentians, all that was on the island was the promise of, and perseverance to get to The States. Ma was testament to that. She would fly to the American Embassy in Barbados and stand in line for hours to be granted a visa interview. Her application was rejected five or six times before our names were placed in the book, assured of passage to heaven. My mother was persistent. God helps those... you know. Her three older brothers, two older sisters and mother were in The States or Canada. She was going too. We, my younger sisters Annie (8), Teri (3) and I had no idea what Ma was planning once she got us there, but we came with joy. Actually, American Airlines landed Annie and me at Newark International Airport on August 23, 1985. Ma and Teri arrived two days later. "I didn’t want them to think the whole family was invading," she would later attest. But we had.

The last Ashes of St. Vincent had blown to Scotch Plains, New Jersey.