czvasser Afroticity, Morning Coffee

Black History

I realize now there is no DNA test that can tell me what line of African Kings I descended from. I wish I could say I came from Kush and my ancestors bathed in the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, but it ain’t going to happen and in the cosmic scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. I’ve come to realize the most important thing I am is what I was yesterday and my firsts may come tomorrow. You cannot take that away from me.

I may or may not be a third generation something or other, but I am great in my eyes. I hope others see what I aspire to. I hope my head and heart see it that way, maybe you will too. I don’t assume to be perfect or even always good but I am the first and only me. I proclaim I am HUMAN as imperfect as that might be. I demand Human Rights, not civil rights, those meager things you give based on class and privilege, but the fundamental things that come with drawing breath. I realize those things are not universal or absolute but in this time and in this place I stand and say I AM A MAN and nothing you say or do not say will make that mutable.

So keep your history. I don’t need it. I will make history as I go. I don’t need accolades or letters after my name. I need not someone to mark my passing or carry on my name. Simply being me, I have planted a banner that will eventually tatter and fall, but it will have stood for me and I will have stood for something.

czvasser Afroticity, Morning Coffee

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.

czvasser Afroticity

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