Ahhh it feels good to be Black. Or brown. Latino/a. Afro-Caribbean. African. or Aframerican, or whatever the heck we've decided to call ourselves these days...
We are the descendants of people who've survived 400 years of terrorism with our humanity and pride in tact and been fly as we've been doing it. I'm not glorifying pain, I'm simply recognizing the beautiful struggle.
So where does that leave us today? 40 years removed from the Civil Rights Movement?
It leaves us with much unfinished business. We have no reason to be apathetic in the face of the prison industrial complex, environmental racism, sexism, institutionalised racism, eurocentric education, poverty and the list goes on and on. So why are so many of us oblivious the the world around us and even our own 'hoods? With the proliferation of online communities like the crack-like facebook.com, myspace and all of its cousins, we young people are more willing to log in mad hours writing in people's honesty boxes than reading about how Columbia University plans on buying huge swaths of West Harlem, displacing thousands of black and brown folk. I'm not innocent, hell I have a blog (and I'm so grateful to my 9 loyal readers, you inspire me). But lets not use these tools to further our i'gnance folk. Let's not shame Huey P. Newton, your grandmama and dem. They got dogs sicked on them so we could live their dream. We have to do as Nas said and "Carry on Tradition".
Peep these links, and hopefully the more we all read and tune into the world around us, we can better serve our people:
And do download the Tavis Smiley Show podcast, he's like the uncle we all wished we had instead of the stealing, molester, sheisty ones we end up with. All my Chris Rock fans know what I'm saying. Books and newspapers ain't krypontite!
