Intimate

     Your neighborhood should be the place where you can be you.  That’s what it was for me:  On my street, in my community. . .   With people who know me, who care for me. . .  But then again, most of the people in my neighborhood looked like me.  Their mommies look like my mommy.  Their pops look like my pop.  They all made around the same amount of  money; had cars in which cost around the same cost—most of us even hung out with each other.  We acted in a similar way and had a lot of the same types of past-times; Like heading up to Brewytown to buy imbibes, indulging while listening to baseball or watching football—which is quite understandable because we thought a lot like each other:  Regular folks with regular ideas, trying to find our place in world—and this is the place that we’d fall back to: A quite comfortable place with people who understood us; who liked us, and got to know us because of our similarities:  The ARE endeared to us.  We faced the hardest times together.  We endured the pressures of THE OUTER mainstream world, and saw we had to protect our own principles, interests and INTEGRITY.   That’s because they are the same people, with similar interests; similar likes and dislikes.  You don’t have to think too hard about “what and why,” it’s within your sphere of thinking—because it’s in your genes—because it’s in your heritage.  Culture is what a people do, and as such, it is an outgrowth of a people’s evolution.  Sly from the Family Stone once said, Stand!  In the end, you’ll still be you: One who’s done all the things you set out to do.  Only integrity would allow a man to say that.  Stand for something, or fall for anything.  Only your principles will allow you to stay that.

     I grew up on a block with nineteen guys all around the same age, and with about the same amount of females.   We rolled together.  The reason we got together was to protect ourselves from being drafted into the neighborhood gang.  We were full of people with leadership abilities, we just found their politics different from our politics and we had not get amalgamated; we had to maintain our integrity, separate from being gang affiliated.  You dig me?  Any way, we lived next to the park, and man, did we comb it!  We covered all of its square mileage of that part of the park that was near our neighborhood.  We went to the park to go swimming at the park’s playgrounds.  We played baseball together by splitting up into two opposing teams.   We looked for girls in pairs and threesomes.  We played touch football and played chess in the recreation centers, and spent a lot of our waking hours together; And through these acts we really got to know each other very closely.  We were real intimate—in that respect. . .  We got up every morning and planted ourselves on the “stoops,” like permanent fixtures, until everybody was present and accounted for—then WE decided what WE were going to do.  Bobby was the leader—but Kevin was a leader in his own right—that is, he had a little faction of his own.  Heck, I was a leader too, but would bow to superior rationale; thus concur we truly had an oligarchy—if not, REAL democracy.  And without knowing it, we were developing a culture and evolving all of its’ elements.  Culture is, simply put, what a people do—it may be broken down into several sub-categories; but this is simply what it is.

    I said that, to say this: This country masquerades as a democracy, but it is really a domain culture ruling over a multi-cultural and multi-national society:  Only on my block, we were all Black children consisting of a group of  guys who were better at leadership than others were; In America, you have a group of members, put into power by the electorate; that is, members who have a certain amount of richness and social status—belonging to the same race—who then decide what members of other races they are going to be allowed to be symbolic tokens of the power which the ruling class always retain control of.  This is known as the Electoral College and White Supremacy.  There will be no hostile take-overs or factions that will grow in population in America and eventually overthrow the government; like the Goths did to the Roman government. . .  

     You see, on my block, we were all members of the same group of people—of the same social class—poor people on the come up: In this society, the electorate are members of the same type of people—but the group they preside over is multi-cultural and multi-national (with the Latino population rapidly increasing in size).  The Electoral College are members of the same social class which rule over America—the rich, which preside over all the other social classes: This type of atmosphere is what the Electoral College is made of, and they have the dubious distinction of electing the president who will rule over the country and Senate (most Senate members are rich are part of the legislative branch makes all the laws, declares war, regulates interstate and foreign commerce and controls taxing and spending policies). 

     Most people think THE PEOPLE elect the president of the United States; this is fundamentally flawed: When you vote, you vote for members of the electoral college who say they are for that official you want for the presidency.  Those members of the Electoral College usually vote in favor of who they represent, but all electors are not under contractual agreement to do so.  Which means, this group of rich Whites decide who will be the leader of the multi-cultural and multi-racial and multi-peopled America, and that is an application of White Supremacy.  In other words, you elect a group of rich Whites who are supposedly more informed and more elite at such matters to elect your president. . .  Elections in most government offices—city, state and federal—take substantial amounts of money in order to run for the position; so must candidates solicit to the wealthy for campaign contributions.  In turn, these candidates are obligated to their contributors to return the favor, by doing things on behalf of their contributors.  This allows the wealthy to maintain a certain status quo—this allows them to maintain their supremacy; while looking multi-cultural: The ones in office is the ones who will place the game the way the rich people of the people who colonized this place want it.  So in a democratic country, when you say, rule by the people, which people are you referring too: All the people or an elite group of rich colonizers who control the whole democratic process? 

     We, as the neighborhood oligarchy, seemed more democratic than this country, because we listened to everyone and decided what was best for as much as possible.  In this country, they will say that they do what’s best for the majority; but then they also say that that the majority rules: This implies a minority as well. . .which might be misconstrued as a smaller number—but that simply is not so: Women outnumber men all around the world at a ratio of about four to one, and yet women are called a minority: Is that true? So what does this word minority mean?  If you take all the minorities in this discussion that they are talking about and line them all up—you’d come up with a group that consists of all women, immigrants, then non-European immigrants, sexual alternatives and deviants, then Black males who live in this country.  Seems to me, that the word minority is short for lesser issues or things that White males who are descendants to this colony     would rather not deal with, but will deal with in hierarchal manner—of course, with Black males at the bottom.

     I used to work in a Jewish community that was pretty well, but I noticed in their stores there were some things you could get cheaper elsewhere.  Now these people had cars to go elsewhere, but continued to buy there.  It took me years to realize that supporting a community store to them (who are stereotyped as frugal), was more important than saving a buck.  This kind of logic eludes many of us, because we fall for the sales pitch of , “Why pay more?”  But when you sum it up, by spending money in another area; by paying sales taxes in another man’s area—your money goes to build up the richness of another community and the taxes pays for better, smoother roads for you to come and give up more of  hard earned money!  Why pay more, when you can make the rich get richer!  I’m with the Jewish concept: “Why pay more?  So you can keep your money and tax dollars in your community were it belongs.”

     Alphonso owned a restaurant on the corner of my block.  He lived nearby.  He served the sandwiches that we liked to eat.  He served hoagies of almost every type, tuna hoagies, regular hoagies. . .  And Greedo El Ducchi (my hungry alter ego) frequently combed the neighborhood for soda bottles (which carried with them a deposit fee), until I had enough bottles to purchase a hoagie and a Crystal-Mint Lifesavers.  Alphonso lived near by and I’m sure his spent some of the money he made in our neighborhoods—much more than we do today.  It is said that other cultures, and peoples of those cultures, recycle their wealth within their communities several times before that wealth is released to the mainstream society at large through paying various taxes and buying various goods, products and raw materials not produced within their smaller communities.

     The above discussions I had with you concerning my neighborhood camaraderie are commonly known as cultural past-times, rituals and practices.  These things vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and people to people  Culture breaks down in to various subjects—like arts, humanity, education, religion and philosophy—but basically culture is what a people do.  Culture can also represents the evolution of  group conscious—intellectually through our interactions with ourselves and others—and our reflections upon those experiences experienced as a people.  In essence, what I’m saying is—the way I am—is in part due to my interactions with my own people and my interactions with mainstream America.  What I’m also saying is, my interactions with other people will always be different because of the way I am cultivated by my own people, in contradistinction to other peoples and cultures.  

     There are many, many acts and artifacts that bear unique significances only to the people who produced them: Others may experience them and even related to them—but not like the people who produce them; And then again, other people may not even see the relevance of it!  What I described to you, that went on in my neighborhood, touched some of you—on some levels because they are universal—on the other hand, some the levels in which these things can be experienced or related to may be only known to my people and my people alone:  Only Jewish people can tell of what effects that the holocaust had and continue to have on Jewish people.  They have certainly made plenty of movies concerning it, have built several institutions concerning it; as well as several neuroses because of it; and though we may try to relate—there are some things that will be known only to full fledged Jews fully immersed in Jewish culture—and the same thing goes for Hebrew people (peoples whose distinctions are as subtle as the difference between Latins, Latinos, and Italians). 

    Where I grew up—and the time I grew up—there weren’t that many Black stores in the neighborhood—most of them were Jewish stores and very often you would find customers having running tabs or credit with them.  And of those customers, many would complain that the owners would say that there was more owed than the borrower recollected.  I could only look at this as a perfect example of not treating others as you want to be treated, but I surmise this goes deeper than that.  I had a Jewish dentist who cracked my tooth and tried to act like it just decayed to that point: I knew this was not true, because I received cleaning four times a year by two different offices.  There’s no way the periodontist would miss the progressive development of such huge cavity that the dentist said I had; especially since he had an angle of his own (trying to get me to do an experiment treatment that my insurance wouldn’t cover).  I also worked for Jewish people on two occasions: A short order cook, in which his wife treated me repressively, like a slave and not an employee and an apartment building, where the owner was attempting to treat me like an object and not in the same human form as he.  Overall, I would say (based upon my experiences), I wasn’t just treated different but inferiorly, not as bright, and less than them.  I find that many Jews try to play the angles on us or treat us like servants and not as employees who are the same as them.  You would think after the oppression of Jews in Europe, and three holocausts, they wouldn’t do this to Black people; but I guess they see it differently. 

     Often I see this to be the case with many Caucasian people.  On a whole, though their might be many who will take the time to explore us as a people, there are equally those who want no contact at all or don’t concern themselves with our plight.  I subscribe that the best word for this is called xenophobic: having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries,

 cultures, or peoples. 

     This becomes a huge dilemma, because overall, we as a people, teach our children to go to school, matriculate and seek employment from other races; instead of seeking employment for Black business.  This often leaves us subject to the opinion of others, which is low—since America has a lot to do with the image the world has of us.  We even have low opinions of ourselves, based upon the images that mainstream society projects concerning our people.  Years of slavery has culturally ingrained a plethora of bad habits for Black people.   We, as a people, have been subjected to such an inferior opinion of us in mainstream society for so long, that many of us also think negatively about ourselves and those of our kind.  We often try exotically to disassociate ourselves from this negative role in American society: “I’m one half cherokee and Black—and I think I got a little Filipino in me as well.”  What we must recognize that what you call, “I hate “the N word,” is the desire to disassociate with the pain associated with being Black in a White mainstream world that has never been friendly to us. 

     We  typically do not look at the possibility that among our own peers we can regulate our own image within our community.  As you should be able to see from the experiences I shared with you, we had a very tight block and a cohesive community for a very long time; showing that these types of thing CAN HAPPEN because they happened before.  I had a lot of love in the community I grew up in; and I am a product of that love.  Our love and pride is the key ingredient to making this happen.  The surveillance crews [police] in our communities are the only obstacle to changing the status quo that is plaguing our neighborhoods; but even that can be handled if we do something constructive and stop “putting ourselves under the hammer’ through entertaining negative activities.  Our Black neighborhoods ARE indeed one of the few places where the Blackman can totally rule over HIS environment.  If we would focus our efforts to turning around our self-hatred, we could change this political chaos and create something very beneficial: Just try saying something encouraging to every person you know in your hood; just have something pleasant to say—something uplifting—and watch what happens. . .  

     It is fundamentally flawed, to believe that we can join mainstream society and have our interests looked after, when we have been looked down upon and treated inferiorly by that same society for so long.  It is equally flawed to think our lack of refinement is fundamentally our fault, when the horrors of the slave trade in America has stripped us of our cultural identity, in order to make us suitable for slave trading from 1555 to 1863.  This institution employed a nefarious, degrading and denigrating process, that still haunts Black people until this day.   We are sort of blaming the victim for his dilemma, as though he transformed himself to be other than himself.  I teach of the greatness and accomplishments of  our people and our culture, because I don’t rely on others to be concerned at all—or tell the story the way it should be—which is truthfully.  We should not expect others to do more for us than we are willing to do for ourselves; and if we continue to look for work or handouts from others, and not produce a better condition of self-reliance for our future—then don’t be surprised if we revoke your membership card. 

Thank you for your consideration,

C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers 

Peace

  

     

 #Intimate #Belonging #Brotherhood