We need to crack the code that explains our inability to unify and our compulsion to disrespect and undermine one another. To do so, however, we have to go back, way back to another time and another continent, when a strange boat arrived on the West African shores.
We’re so far gone that we need to have a preacher tell us his interpretation of the Bible, and tell us how to get closer to God. These things are, in essence, things that we should and could do for ourselves.
Why do we so willingly give up control of our lives?
Now, we’re not really giving knowledge, and we’re not giving educational information. What we’re doing is teaching people how to Fly in the Spirit… Oh the spirit did it, Oh, I’m waiting on God, Oh, The Lord will do it!… The Church is trying to hide behind spirituality, when God is saying… I’ve given you the power, now you’ve got to get wisdom!
During slavery, blacks had little to no control over their lives and fates. This seeded a sense of living in the now in our psyches. In a society where rank is determined by material wealth, we are still seeking to buy lost statues, only this time though mindless, unbridled consumption.
Muhammad Ali on the Vietnam War Draft
The fact that this is STILL relevant should be very telling.
(via locksandglasses)
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
Malcolm X
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
– MALCOLM X
Excerpt from a play A. Peter Bailey (a sincere brother who worked with Malcolm X in his Organization of Afro-American Unity) wrote about Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Medgar Evers. The play is about what they would say about today’s society.
“Martin Luther King”: Can you believe that our young people are listening to that stuff? I can’t bring myself to call it music.
“Malcolm X”: That stuff, Martin, is called gangster rap. The first time I heard lyrics like those it was from a party full of black teenagers. The lyrics basically glorify criminal attitudes and violent actions against each other. For the life of me, I can’t see why they don’t understand the system is allowing, even encouraging them to demean and brutalize and kill each other.
“Medgar Evers”: The real deal is, if they were killing white bums, not to say white businessmen or politicians, at the rate they kill each other they would be brutally stopped. If they were killing members of the black middle class they would stop them. What you have here is basically low-income black males killing other low-income black males and most people don’t care.
