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

czvasser Fried Chicken, Morning Coffee

We Need Voices

We need voices large as the ocean
to whisper into the piled tinder
the spark will come
flame leaping from prophetic lips
stolen from self-proclaimed gods.

We need prayers righteous as half babies
alters without sacrifice
hands that help hands
regardless of regard
love as everyone.

We need a supreme seppuku
to circumcise human nature
disembowel its apex predator
leaving an Eden gardener
believing all trees have knowledge.

czvasser Afroticity

Education Valued

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Thanksgiving dinner was an unaffair in my family after grandmother died. My mother didn’t cook. She didn’t know how. She had a High School diploma instead of kitchen skills.  Grandmother was a wonderful cook. She was a cook and housekeeper her entire life. She promised herself her daughter would never be either so grandmother never taught mother how to do those things. Grandmother died when I was 10 and that was the last time I had Thanksgiving dinner completely home cooked.

Mother grew up to go to business not work. As grandma Tammie used to say, you wore overalls for work but you went to business in clothes just less than Sunday best. There was always discrimination and segregation but education was the key to how differently you were treated. Maybe you were meant to be one of the The Talented Tenth, or later, a Five-Percenter but the cosmic common denominator was (and is) education. But more than 60 years after Brown v. the Board of Education kids of color in NYC Public schools fail at a 65% rate. There is justice but where is the value is one doesn’t look for it or feel it’s needed.

My grandmother would often talk to herself when she sat in the kitchen and smoked pall malls. I’d ask her why and she’d smile, pat me on the sholder and say. “Baby, that’s the only way I can get an intelligent conversation around here”. I’ve learned the value education and intelligent conversation. Today, too many folks of color would rather be cooks.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution