Things must Change:
There’s No Limit To Our Range. . .
I am in my car, and a red light comes on—in the light array overhead: So what do I do? Stop, of course! So why do I do this—and—how did you know that? You knew that because that was what you were taught to do; We all were, in every state, in the United States. I would suppose this would be the same, no matter where you go, in the Western world; no matter what country you go to. And why is that? Because these people regulate how people behave; they are the ones who establish a civil order. It is established in order to get things done in accordance to the way these people want things to be. If you violate, you pay a penalty. Just do as you’re told, and everything will be alright—everybody follows orders; and this is no exception. Well, at least you know what to expect.
With expectations like this, comes rules to regulate. You can’t have most people stopping, while others believing they should go. . . That would produce chaos. In order to distinguish reliability from chaos, there must be order; but who determines it, and for what purpose? I am alright with someone determining something for the common good, or that simply through findings it is commonly seen or established to be right—but I am not down with a controlling group of people determining things on sentiments and deciding votes.
As a good brother once said to me, “Same person, same place, you get the same result.” In this case, I guess, the attempt is to eliminate all the variables from the equation. After all—you don’t want lose cannons to come popping up—and all things considered, anything could happen. . . So in that sense, order keeps chaos from occurring. I guess, the key factor, or idea in all these cases, is to know what to expect—and with that you have something to depend on—assurance; or something to rely on. But in whose best interests are these things established on? I wonder. . .
In America, what do we have to rely on? As a Blackman in America, I could strive to speak to the vast audience about freedom—but some White person in this same country could possibly say to me, “What do you know about freedom? You and your people have always been subjugated in America. Your ancestors were slaves, and now you Blacks are treated with second-class citizenship in this country. You guys never appreciated the type of freedom I experienced.” You see, years ago, an older Black man from Panama, by the name of R. A. Straughn said to me, “True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want—regardless of who you offend or what rules you break. . . True freedom is your ability to do whatever you want within your cultural confines, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s rights or freedom.” Upon these such things, the words made perfect sense to me. And yes, those Whites who think that way are right, I may not know what true freedom is in this country—and the reason would be because your sense of entitlement and the type of freedom you seem enjoy is always superimposing and interfering with my rights and my freedoms—leaving me wanting and making the whole thing such a travesty.
Maybe the reason R. A. Straughn’s definition made sense to me—is because mentally we’re on the same page with that sort of issue: But then again—I never had that understanding of freedom before—so that can’t be exactly that. . . Maybe the meaning was one which matched with my upbringing, my moral values—but then again; I was raised under Christianity (within the Protestant Baptist faith); so I can’t expect all Christians with similar backgrounds to see it that way regardless of race. I say that it makes sense because, when I look at all that has happened to Black and Brown people in the wilderness of America, I see acts done by White colonist Americans who proclaimed they were “God fearing Christians.” Hell, why even the ship Blacks were brought over here on was called, the “Good Ship Jesus”. . . And when Columbus founded the Native Americans living here in 1492—he still proclaimed he founded the land under Europe and the cross—as though the Natives were less than humans and thus didn’t matter. But I can say, R. A. and myself might have had enough similar journeys and experiences in the Western World; i.e., its’ subjugations, along with our comparative ethnic similarities, to reach the same or similar conclusions about freedom.
Culture is basically what a people do. When I say people, I mean group of people according to things like a family; not just a nuclear family but an extended family—like a tribe—which, for the most part, would consists of the same race or ethnicity. This group of people will have a certain way of doing things, and if they are doing anything with consistency, in the attempt to keep the family involved—eventually these things will becomes customary. In turn, the custom becomes traditional or conventional; way of doing things; That is, the things that the group thinks are important—their values, morals; behavior they think works for the group becomes their ethics. Now when you share a space or country, with another culture, who have controlling interests in the land in which we live—their opinions about things and other people and cultures can be most damaging—sometimes to the other groups careers and livelihood.
That being said, freedom cannot be taken outside its’ cultural context; meaning your freedom is guaranteed according to cultural parameters. Meaning, you are free to do things within your cultural framework. When you move outside of your cultural references, this is a journey into the unknown. Sometimes these things are derived by camaraderie or societies within a group of people; other times they are clans and tribes, and even more so, it can be a matter of ethnicity. Culture maybe for social reasons or it maybe past-time tendencies; it maybe religious or ritualistic—it maybe philosophical—but whatever it is, it is a group reality. It is the things we feel most at home with. The purpose is to galvanize a people into one cohesive group. On a basic level, there’s strength in numbers—and that’s what social means; advocated for the same common cause.
True freedom is protected by the group. The freedom of the United States is protected by the government and its’ military. Freedom doesn’t mean you do what you want to do—because in doing something like that—your freedom will impinge upon someone else. Many times, in the United States, our freedom is trampled upon by those who control the media, the sports, the television, the arts and culture. Sometimes our ideas run contrary to theirs and they have the ability, with all these weapons, to put slander on our name—or kick a man when he is down. This culture once had us down; because it had us in chains. The chains are presently gone, but the scars remain. We have been doing a lot of new things, but confidence level is effected by innuendo and attitude projected by mainstream America. What you have in America, for better or worst, is what the dominant culture chose to do—when they faced life’s decisions; and since there’s been two Civil Rights protests to try to be included equally into the America’s dream; and we still haven’t because we are depending on another people’s sense of fairness. Our survival, our livelihood, by far; has not been depended upon our own self-help efforts—but upon mainstream America—and America has played us to the outside. All our efforts, for the longest time, has been trying to win social acceptance in every facet of American life.
What I am here to say is, their decisions effect us all, because we are here; but just because we are here does not mean we have to agree. And when we don’t, we become subject to their mainstream public opinion. Like their issues on sexuality—Black people generally do not agree with attitudes and practices those Americans who are of European descent, and America’s Media Machine shuns us because we don’t. But there’s a higher source we come from, which we all should have some sense of homage and allegiance, and that is our origin in this world and how that source fashioned existence: As well as, subsequently, our land of origin and our origin as a people. Within these parameters, we are free. Within these parameters, there is a lot of commonality of thought. Within these aspects of reality, we feel the blood pumping through our veins, we feel part of the land as a place of belonging—as warm as the milk that drips from a child’s mouth from her mother’s teat and as familiar as the heartbeat that emanates from her chest.
But now, we the Black people who live in the wilderness have been taken away from our home, stripped from our language, our culture, our God or Gods—and have been molded and shaped in a servitude position (for another group of people), for well over 430 years. Some who have taken the time to familiarize themselves with these facts, and there are some who are not aware of what has happened—or more succinctly, “Who and what is causing all these things to happen.” Awareness means you know—you are conscious of the reality. And just as children quite often do, many of us blame ourselves and perform self loathing on each other—displaying distrust with each other—while displaying acts of forgiveness for the system which “stole their minds.” Everything’s upside-down.
With knowledge comes confidence. There is a certain comfortability that comes with that confidence—and even if you are denied—you have the confidence in knowing the truth. Not a blind faith, but a faith that knows that which happened, could once again happen; under the right condition. But those without roots can be toppled. They have no sense of belonging, no sense of being—no chronology, no tradition; often with a great distrust of others of their kind. As Malcolm said, “They always project Africa in a negative light: jungle savages, cannibals, nothing civilized. Why then, naturally it was so negative that it was negative to you and me, and you and I began to hate it. We didn’t want anybody telling us anything about Africa, much less calling us Africans. In hating Africa and in hating the Africans, we ended up hating ourselves, without even realizing it. Because you can’t hate the roots of a tree, and not hate the tree. You can't hate your origin and not end up hating yourself. You cannot hate Africa and not hate yourself. You show me one of these people over here who has not been thoroughly brainwashed and has a negative attitude towards Africa, and I’ll show you one who has a negative attitude toward himself. You can’t have a positive toward yourself and a negative attitude towards Africa at the same time. To the same degree that your understanding of and your attitude toward Africa becomes positive, you’ll find that your understanding of and attitude towards yourself will also become positive. And this is what the white man knows. So they very skillfully make you and me hate our African identity, our African characteristics. You know yourself that we have been a people who hated our African characteristics. We hated our heads, we hated the shape of our nose, we wanted one of those doglike noses, you know; we hated the color of our skin, hated the blood of Africa that was in our veins. And in hating our features and our skin and our blood, why end up hating ourselves. It made us feel inferior; it made us feel inadequate; made us feel helpless. And when we fell victim to this feeling of inadequacy or inferiority or helpless, we turned to somebody else to show us the way. We didn’t have confidence in another Blackman to show us the way, or Black people to show us the way. In those days we didn’t. We didn’t think a Black man could do anything except play some horn—you know; make sounds and make you happy with some songs and in that way. But in serious things, where our food, clothing, shelter, and education were concerned, we turned to the White man. We never thought in terms of bring these things into existence for ourselves; we never thought in terms of doing for ourselves: Because we felt helpless.”
And with all this self-hatred, we can trace some of our demise, from self-sabotage; trying to dodge the unshakeable truth of your Blackness—because you’ve been Black all your life. You’ve been Black, but you tried to escape it—not being Black that is—but the images associated and identified to Black people by American society: like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Step-and-Fetch-It, Butterfly McQueen, and Amos and Andy. Who broadcasted these shows? Who sponsored these shows? Do Blacks own submarines? Then how do the drugs come from overseas into Black neighborhoods? That never makes the news. . . Just the Black drug dealers and the hoochie girls. . .
And in today’s society, many of our people get money and disassociate with the community they came from, or the things they do: Just look at P-Diddy’s Ciroc Vodka commercials: Like Sammy Davis, Jr., before him, Diddy is attempting to create a world where he could escape the association of being Black in America. I didn’t say he is attempting not to be Black, just saying the culture in his commercials is an affluent Western multi-racial society; consisting of “wannabes” (those who carry no association with our normal ethnicity). In other words, his image is those of a Mafia Don living, “La Dolce Vita.“ The problem is two-fold: While these people may play as though they are part of their elite society, but we can never be accepted as, simply because of the roles their society made for “people like us”. . . The second part, is that our “victim” believes he or she is somewhat different from the rest of us; and feel they owe no allegiance to their own people what so-ever. It may have started out with their schooling, it may have started with a philosophy of the parents, supported with a benevolent hand; but let us not forget that these descendants of America’s colonizers, are descendants of a people who are very rigid in class-structure [England] as the world well knows. . . The other thing is, whether a time is difficult or kind towards your development; It is what you’re going through that makes you who you are. And in this case, it is the community which forges and shapes you; therefore you do owe the community—as Will Smith, Jill Scott, and Kevin Hart illustrates for the Philadelphia communities from which they come.
It would seem to me that many of my ancestors were on to something, when they caution us not to follow behind the “White man.” Not because they’re crazy or always wrong—or that Black people are always right: It’s just that by thinking this way, they were thinking for themselves; making their own determinations: They were determining what was right or wrong for themselves and not blindly imitating this society. It is thinking like that which would help people like us be more “objective” about the Western world: Its’ assets and detriments; which is necessary in order for us to reconstruct or recapture the culture we lost during the 458 years of slavery. I taught my child to approach living in America like a foreigner, rather than a citizen: This way they would not assume that the “values” we call American, were necessarily their own. They would be studying humanity and evaluating it for themselves; much like an anthropologist studies social and cultural patterns for comparative analysis. We can never be leaders or masters at someone else’s cultural system—much less live off of another man’s wisdom: But we can study our own people of the past, because in doing so—ethnically—we would know; “That which was done before, can be done again,” with guts and a lot of determination. This would not be blind faith—this would fall under the category of belief in yourself. Right now, many of us believe too much in them, and their ability to change (which time shows they are unwilling), rather than us and our willingness to change and become something better than what we have become. These things must change, there's no limit to our range—accept the ones we place on ourselves. . .
And as so often as I do, I leave you with a song: Betty Carter--Something Big
Thank you for your consideration,
C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers
