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Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Black history should be annotated as Pre and Post Martin Luther King Jr. Before MLK, we were Colored, Negro and often boys, girls apes, coons, baboons, jigaboos and n****rs and lynched, murdered and bombed. After MLK we slowly became African American. I, personally, am Black. I resist being African American because it still looks, feels and quacks like 3/5 American.  But since MLK was able to get race on a “Visible National Stage” we have continued to evolve, to become more human albeit not more likable until recently.

The 60’s were an incredible time. There is significance in it being 100 years after the Civil War. What should have been peace and prosperity was cold war, McCarthyism, Korea, Viet Nam, J. Edger Hoover and chickens coming home to roost. In the midst of it all Martin Luther King Jr. stood for Civil Rights which really should be read “HUMAN RIGHTS”. MLK starts with dignity for the formerly enslaved but soon encompasses the poor, the downtrodden and the immigrants identified on the Statue of Liberty.

Nobody likes a reformer but everyone appreciates one when reform is proved. We have yet to perfect it. Today’s headlines are filled with Civil Rights or do you believe sexual harassment is about something else. It’s the other side of the same problem. Someone out there with money, power and influence doesn’t value you for who you are or takes advantage of the status they impose upon you. So, it has taken 50 years to get sexual lynching and reverse castration out in the open. It is one step closer to Civil Rights/Human Rights in America. I continue and will always applaud Martin Luther King Jr. for getting the conversation and movement unstuck and started in my lifetime.

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Drinking The Kool-Aid

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The idea of “Fake News” isn’t new. If it walks like a duck . . . you know how the rest goes. We’ve grown up on it. We’ve been fed it all our lives. It’s called history. Even before writing, we had to rely on someone else’s account of what happened, why it happened and who was the winner.

General A wins the battle. He tells how he and his loyal troops won. General B lost the battle and subsequently, the war. His account doesn’t matter. General A’s account lives for a thousand years and becomes legend. There may be a simple truth to the battle and the war. We will probably never know it. Truth is often not glamorous. Truth doesn’t make anyone a hero.

We are eating fruit of a poisonous tree and still blaming Eve for it. Maybe that was the original spin. A woman subordinate to man, duped by a serpent into sin or so the story goes. The truth is we are all still spinning and drinking from segregated fountains.

History and Truth are not synonymous. Truth comes with balance. History comes with punishment, an indication of right and wrong and hell to pay. Truth supports equal advantage. History does not. History always supports advantage based on some strength or wisdom, some sorcery, magic or a well-placed spy. The loser always suffers loss and disgrace until history is rewritten or until they become winners.

When the benefit to the winners is so great and clear, is there blame in writing false history? There is blame and the losers become lessors. There is always fault but history doubles down and suggests winners cannot be wrong. They won. They are in control. Everyone else gets to drink the Jamestown Kool-Aid.

The de facto and de jure separate but equal world we live in is full of haves and have-nots. Have-nots will not be winners until we understand the game and work religiously to change it. Haves will never hand over the reigns of their horses. Effort must be religious because it will require leaps of faith. History will not support the have-nots ability to make such great leaps. The first step is to consider the waiting room. If it’s not as everyone else’s, even if it’s better, somethings wrong. Work toward fixing it. Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid.

#Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid, #DDKA, #afroticity

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Emmett Till Revisited

America has ignored sexual harassment for years but, with the gates now open, it has become topic of conversation. The race side of sexual harassment has as punishment included every extreme from beating to burning, castration and lynching because of “accusations” of improper sexual advance. The media /press, however, continue to avoid conjoining sex and race. When race was/is involved, “accusations” were/are taken seriously  and completely ignored otherwise. Emmett Till was brutally murdered, more than 60 years ago, because he allegedly whistled at a white woman. Simply looking at a white woman was cause for murder in America. The Emmett Till accusation we know now, from the accuser, was a lie. We find sex fiends around every corner and their secrets being kept, like in Emmett Till’s murder, long after the fact. How do we get justice? Americans won’t even talk about sex and race.

The reports of shameless conduct are staggering and we stand by talking about how much is too much. Companies that were and are aware of perpetrators hope to distance themselves by quickly firing white offenders without admitting that they knew all along and did nothing. African Americans men have died for less, much, much less. We look forward to the justice that must be afforded to women in America, but we also look forward to the dialog that condemns the atrocities that were committed by sex-mongers who falsely ascribed their behaviors to African Americans.

Read: Emmett Till Revisited in Art