I have just determined that I'm not Black.
It is impossible for me to be Black.
I say this because I keep being told that Blacks follow "Black leaders" like Jesse Jackson, Sr, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, etc, but I keep missing out on them telling me what to think or how to think.
Where are the mind meld sessions being held?
I am missing the sessions. So I cannot be Black.
How can most Blacks not support "gay marriage" but the "Black leadership" support "gay marriage"? How else can most Blacks support school vouchers but the "Black leadership" not support school vouchers?
I guess "most Black people" are missing the mind meld sessions. Does that mean "most Black people" are not Black?
I thought leadership was about leading? Part of being a leader is persuading others to your way of thinking. See, black people may not approve of homosexuality or "gay marriage" but they aren't about getting all up in people's lives and bebdrooms about. That's the difference between most white social conservatives and the decidedly socially conservative black community.
Cobb, I think that even today many of those on stage could hold and audience on their own. I think Tavis wasn't forced to get a whole grip of black people on stage to fill the seats but chose a large cross section of black thinkers, leaders etc., to get a larger perspective.
Posted by: wcole at March 3, 2005 01:10 AMYou're black Ed, just a tad conflicted at the moment and not mindful of one of the key moments in the Tavis spectacle...,
"So why do we tell the President that the most important issue in the Black Community is gay marriage?" he asked us. "We have been taken out by a Weapon of Mass Distraction!" Rev. Jackson told us. And to the ministers on the panel, Bishop Eddie Long and Rev. Harry Jackson, Rev. Jackson told them, "Shame on you for going to the House of the most Powerful Leader of the Free World and telling him that first, YOU speak for all African-Americans, and while you had the opportunity to talk to the President about the issues that are most important to African-Americans, the only things that came out of your mouths were abortion and gay marriage!" The crowd went wild with applause and a standing ovation, while these two Pastors hung their heads in shame."
Now you see why the right has a problem with Rev. Jackson.
Posted by: cnulan at March 3, 2005 11:36 AMI'm sure you're still "black" in all the meaningful ways or you would not have posted so eloquently what can only be borne of some pain and dissatisfaction.
For my part, I believe the so-called "leadership" is still in a time warp. Spiritual leadership is cool, but it is hardly the heart of the matter. The material basis for our collective plight has to be resolved through leaders in the areas of math, science, finance, etc. Issues of health, security, communications, food, etc. have never been resolved by spiritual leaders of a sovereign people - they have been negotiated by the spiritual leaders of a captured people - like a prison chaplain negotiating extended benefits for a group of convicts.
Black folks will not effectively coalesce around spiritual practice, goals or principles. Since our choice of faith, level of faith, expression of faith are not the issue. The critical mass required to do the heavy lifting exceeds the number of Black Christians and the number of Black Christians willing to work with Black non-Christians.
With any luck, "followers" will be able to internalize when the current leaders emphasize real-world solutions to problems - like saving money, buying collectively, owning property, investing in one another, thinking and acting as if your survival depended on your own skill set, etc. I don't the burden is on the leaders as much as it the followers - besides many in that group lack an organic constituency.
Posted by: Temple3 at March 3, 2005 12:50 PMOh lovely. Going to meet the Man. I'm sure Jackson represents the sentiment of asking for more. He chides the ministers for not having a larger hat in their hands.
Doing for 35 millions? We could afford four years of that, it would be worth it to divest these ninnies and their constituents of their obnoxious prayers.
Posted by: Cobb at March 3, 2005 01:01 PMWith any luck, "followers" will be able to internalize when the current leaders emphasize real-world solutions to problems - like saving money, buying collectively, owning property, investing in one another, thinking and acting as if your survival depended on your own skill set, etc. I don't the burden is on the leaders as much as it the followers - besides many in that group lack an organic constituency.
I agree with everything you said here. Emphasis on *collectively*. Keeping the faith with one another still comprises the sine qua non of blackness and black political relevancy. By that measure, in the aggregate, we long ago ceased to have a unitary, organic interest in common.
Some kneegrows seem to have lost their natural minds contorting themselves to make ideological pronouncements that will keep them in good stead with their employers and their clients. These mannequins lacking in testicular fortitude sold out their interests for a lowly salaryman's paycheck.
Those making statements which parrot the GOP party line - like Bishop Eddie - have most certainly lost their minds to the extent that they've forgotten the encompassing societal context in which we both melanated and black folks live. (melanated refers to persons of color who've lost their sense of blackness as interpersonal communion) These virtual mannequins are *tossing off* in the bathroom and simulating testicular fortitude by trying to play hard.
I'm gonna try to spell it out like I did at P6 - to kick up a notch the notion of a contract or covenant. This will by no means be a matter of luck, rather, it is a conscious decision informed by self-love and altruism toward those culturally and genetically like oneself.
wagon train charters are astonishingly difficult to come by for some strange reason..., I've looked on-line for a month of sundays, and have yet to come up with a valid example, scanned, transcribed, what-have-you.
I was introduced to the wagon train charter by a genealogist friend who spent quite a few hours explaining to me a name spelling change which occurred in her family in the mid 19th century.
Wagon trains were self-contained mobile communities of *settlers* implementing manifest destiny. That community was a business venture which had to literally carry all its supplies and all its members through environmentally hostile territory. (sound familiar?)
Everyone (with the possible exception of small children) was required to carry their own weight and handle their business. The charter was the document which stipulated roles and responsibilities of all members of the community. Useless eaters and shirkers were A. Not Allowed, and B. Left by the Wayside to Die - if they commenced to slipping once the journey had begun.
Back to that name change she explained to me. Because everyone in the wagon train community knew everyone elses business and memories were long..., if somebody slipped and got disavowed, the stigma of that failure was a lasting thing.
Some people, to obviate the stigma associated with a family member's failure, would quite literally change their names as part of the disavowel process to obviate any connection (even in memory) associating them with the personal failure of a relative.
You should have seen this woman's face when she covered this part of the equation, she was beaming as she recounted how serious and hard her ancestors had been, back in the day."
Posted by: cnulan at March 3, 2005 03:01 PM
Please read this piece on genuine Christianity
"Christianity is not a religion; it is a Church - the Church, the Kingdom come, God’s people called out of the world unto Him, and the Communion of Saints. That is, Christianity is not my personal and private salvation through Jesus. As the Body of Christ, it is a deifying process of becoming a communion of persons mutually participating in the Uncreated Energies of the Life of the Trinity and increasingly after its Likeness."
"In Hesychasm, the dianoetic training of the reasoning and deliberative dianoia (also augmented by the ethical and noetic training that frees it from interference from the passions) is to make it fit to serve conscience (syneidesis) in a discriminating and deliberative manner by which we rationally match appropriate means to appropriate ends that are themselves appropriately prioritized for the service of God and neighbor. With a purified nous, the virtue of the reasoning part of mind to match appropriate means to appropriate ends that are properly prioritized is phronesis (that is, prudence, which in its nothing to do with prudery or rather cowardly calculative self-concern that the world seeks to make us believe prudence is) when related to our lives and our neighbors."
These jackleg prosperity pimps are anti-Chrisitan filth. Their churches filled with melanated folks have NOTHING in common with the black church which gave rise to MLK and others. Either socially or spiritually. When you get down to the brass tacks of genuine Christian praxis, the social is the spiritual - they are indistinguishable - anything you see calling itself Christian but not exemplifying this fundamental understanding - is anti-Christian.
genuine blackness = genuine Christian praxis
Imagine if you will what the neurobiological sicknesses of those prosperity *churches* and of racism look from an Orthodox Christian perspective...,
Posted by: cnulan at March 3, 2005 03:09 PMVERY few folks who claim the mantle "Christian" have any idea what that means or entails - I'd say that still fewer, including those in our generation and older - remember any longer what it means to be genuinely, socially, communally, substantively or actively *black*.
My assumption is that only a small minority within our community is up to the rigors of a black wagon train charter. If, as Farrakhan so firmly asserted on Saturday and has asserted all along, we remember in our small enclaves that blackness is on a higher cultural plane than Americaness - a black wagon train charter becomes an entirely feasible proposition.
Going beyond reactivation of the leaven, if as Fraser-net George suggested, we connect up these enclaves of active blackness into an encompassing web, it's really rather surprising what a little yeast will do when it gets started in big moist batch of dough.
Posted by: cnulan at March 3, 2005 03:13 PMI think that we exemplify the yeast, as black as we want to be. That doesn't change the fact that if we're not talking about 50 Cent, we're not going to get going to get 1000 hits a day. Blackfolks just don't care that much.
The other thing I was going to say was that I can see no way to fill that stadium unless you had Jackson & Farrakhan. Homeboy who threw down the medical facts - I don't even remember his name, illustrating my point - nobody would show up for his lecture.
BTW, somebody needs to solicit links from their websites.
Posted by: Cobb at March 3, 2005 03:55 PMI get over 1000 unique visitor per day, plus RSS feeds. I may have mentioned Fiddy two or three times.
Black folks care.
Small note, P6, that unless you've got some kind of racial profilin header in your web log, it's tough to tell what percentage of that clickership is actually Black.
All this Blacker-than-thou, .005 percenter talk makes me wanna spit. Wagon hoes can kiss my left nut.
Lookit, can we agree on some basic things that should be in place for a faster rate of Black Empowerment?
1. Understand credit
2. Understand entrepreneurship
3. Understand yo history
The rest is quarrels over whose jizz can fly furthest.
2.359 meters, biotch.
Posted by: Cobb at March 7, 2005 03:27 PM
It's a tricky one. The thing that struck me today about that whole conference was that it's harder and harder to be a black leader today. Look at all of the herd they had to get on the podium in order to reach any blackfolk. Back in the day, either of those cats could hold the stage by themselves.
Posted by: Cobb at March 2, 2005 06:02 PM