The Last Time We Were Together....

Was in the 60's. When I say we, I'm referring to black men and women. If my memory serves me correctly, it was the 70's that drove a wedge between us (Women's Rights Movement). We were hit even harder in the 80's with the introduction of crack cocaine to our community. In the 90's black women gained their independence and excelled in the work place and began to look down on black men for not excelling at an equally rapid pace, driving an even greater wedge between the genders. Now, just about a decade into the new millennium, the rift that separates us seem insurmountable.

Nothing could be more of a testimony to how far we've gotten away from one another than the latest debacle between Chris Brown and R&B singer Rihanna. Women believe that Brown crossed the line when he allegedly attacked Rihanna. Detractors say that Rihanna, who has spoken in the past about striking her younger brother in the face with a bottle, attacked Brown first. Some women believe that, even if Rihanna struck first, Brown should have just walked away.

For those of you who choose to ignore nature and her purpose, there is a reason why men are physically stronger than women-because typically we are slower to anger and under normal circumstances we use physical violence as a last resort. Women have much shorter fuses and are more emotional. I have theory as to why this is.

The Prince's Gender Theory
Throughout nature the female of most specie are responsible for the care of offspring. Our offspring are our future for without them we cease to exist. Nature, being the wise designer she is, knows that whoever is responsible for the protection of the offspring has to be someone who will act first and think later-enter the female. Females are emotional and they have no problem expressing their emotions. If they are upset, they may cry openly. If they are happy, they express their happiness. If they are angry, hell hath no fury. Nature needs an emotional guardian. Encroach upon the young of any female animal and, regardless of the size difference, that animal will attack. It's an emotional response. She doesn't take time to contemplate the danger involved and sometimes she loses her life defending her young. Male animals are a more analytical-a trait nature cannot afford when it comes to defending the young. Let's say there is a male in charge of the young and a predator encroaches. The male is going to size up that predator and contemplate whether or not he can defeat him. Secondly, he will begin to calculate the distance between he and the predator and whether or not he is close enough to truly be considered a threat. Lastly, he will consider ways he can salvage the situation without actually having to fight physically. A female would have already engaged the predator by now-and most likely sent him or her on their way.

With that said, men-real men, are relatively hesitant to use violence. If this wasn't the case, you would see far more violence perpetrated by men against women. Domestic abuse occurs, I'm not trying to say that it doesn't. But I think that domestic violence, just like immigration, is a political hot button and is sometimes used to manipulate the public. Women have also falsely reported domestic violence. I once dated a woman who was upset because she saw me sitting between two female coworkers at a bar. When I came home, she barricaded the front door of our apartment. I, knowing we never locked our 2nd floor patio door, climbed up on the balcony and let myself in. She then attempted to push me out, but I just walked past her, undressed and went to bed. Moments later, there was a police officer shining a flashlight and a handgun in my face telling me to get dressed. This woman told the officers that I came home and attacked her. The officers separated the two of us and began questioning us. It wasn't long before the officer questioning my ex walked over to his partner and said, "She's changed her story 3 times already. She's lying." I was asked to leave my own apartment and stay the night someplace else-I went to my mother's house for the night and the very next day while this woman was away, moved out of the apartment. Had she been a better liar, I would have most likely been arrested for domestic assault, and worse yet, convicted.

How did we end up this way? Why is it that men find it necessary to violently abuse women or vice versa? Why is it women defend or excuse their own irrational behavior? I have a theory.

The Prince's Theory of Gender Separation
As I mentioned earlier, women are emotional creatures and spend very little time analyzing situations. If it feels bad to them, they're done with it. If it feels good, even though they know it's not right for them, they'll go for it. That's not to say men aren't the same way, they too will do things they know that is not good for them. The difference being, men calculate the amount of damage they may have to endure and weigh the consequences. When I was a child and embarked upon an adventure in mischief, my excuse was already prepared and I determined if the risk was worth the reward. Even as an adult male, the few times I made the decision to cheat in a relationship, I asked myself if it was worth the risk of losing that relationship-it was never a spur of the moment decision. Often I would contemplate for weeks, sometimes months. I always wanted to give the person an opportunity to turn things around before I committed to straying because once that cat was out of the bag, he's extremely reluctant to return.

Back to my theory. During the women's rights movement, women fought for equality. Equal pay, equal access to jobs, and freedom from domestic duties. I can't prove this, but I believe that the women's rights movement was a lesbian movement and heterosexual women were emotionally co-opted. I believe that lesbians hid behind heterosexual women for their own gains. Now that lesbians have the access they desired, heterosexual women find themselves out in the cold, separated from their male counterparts trying to figure out how this occurred. Some 40 years later, if you ask the average woman about equal access to jobs, what you'll find is many of them long for the days when they were domestic engineers-not having to answer to over-bearing bosses, fighting hour-long commutes, and paying ridiculous monthly fees to day care centers. They were the masters of their homes and most ran a pretty organized and tight ship. Men weren't the ones who threw women out of their roles as domestic engineers-they heard the cry from women who had no use for a husband and joined up to become their own (and their family's) worst enemy. Heterosexual women now view men as oppressors, violent abusers, rapists, etc. (lesbian speak), and to their credit, there are men in all of those categories. But for the most part, the majority of men simply want a wife, a nice home, and a family they can be proud of. Lesbians managed to highlight and amplify the worst of men to drive home their point, and women, being the emotional creatures that they are, fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Women must now find a way to lose those negative images of men. Sure, some of us abuse, rape, oppress-but the majority of us don't. And if we're going to judge one another by the behaviors of the worse, it would be just as easy for men to start with their long laundry list of negative female attributes. But that would cause nothing but more gender separation. For every Scott Peterson or O.J. Simpson (whose guilt I still question), there are a thousand Denzel Washingtons, Bill Cosbys, Barack Obamas, or John Does who don't murder, rape or abuse their mates-and they deserve the spotlight more so than the abusers.

I know many of you will denounce my theories and call me insane, but take some time to do a bit of research and see if there is any validity to my belief. One thing we can all agree on is the moment women left the home and began trading their labor for money to buy things they didn't really need, our children became the target of advertisers, and once there was a time they looked to their parents for guidance, they now take their cues from corporate sponsored product salesmen.

TPOKW?

The Matrix and Faith-Based Nonsense

This is going to be one of those mashed posts where I combine two separate topics I'd like to discuss. Hopefully I'll find a way to tie the two together before the end and come out looking like a literary genius.

The Matrix

This may come as a surprise to most, but 99.9% of us have never had an original thought. I can hear some of you out there arguing with me before you even contemplate the concept. Give it some thought-most of what you say, you've either read it somewhere, heard it on television, heard it from someone who either read it or heard it on television, or observed someone else exhibiting a behavior and commented on it. Not one original thought amongst us. The communities we live in? Designed by someone else. The jobs we work? Designed by someone else. The movies we watch, the books we read, the foods we eat, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the languages we speak, the schools we attend, our political parties and affiliations, our religions-this list could continue into perpetuity-all designed by someone else. So, in the grand scheme of things, how important is an individual if he or she just regurgitates that which they are told? Sure, you may disagree with a certain concepts, but immediately you adopt an alternate position- designed by someone else.

If you really evaluate the world we live in, it is the Matrix. A moment of the day doesn't pass without your senses being assaulted in some way shape or fashion, and often those assaults take place in the form of an advertisement; someone, somewhere telling you that in order to be a better person you should buy this product, shop at this store, dine at this restaurant, vacation at this resort, invest with this firm, bank at this bank, marry or date this type of person, listen to this type of music, attend these schools, live in this neighborhood-are you beginning to get the picture? In the midst of this assault, how can we be expected to devise an original concept?

This Matrix also has a built in protection mechanism-it encourages members to punish anyone who is doing anything opposite of the flock through ostracism, ridicule, and an assortment of other negative behaviors designed to encourage dissenters to get back in line with the rest herd. It manages to use internal emotions like jealousy, anger, and hatred against us. In essence, we police ourselves. But this mechanism isn't fail proof-whenever someone or something arises that won't be reherded, the Matrix then co-opts that individual or movement and popularizes it-reducing its effectiveness, (think Jesus, Martin Luther King, The Hippie movement of the 60's). Once these effective movements are stripped of their inherent power and reduced to fad status, they'll either fade or exist harmlessly amongst the immunized herd.

The advent of modern technology (i.e. the internet), has produced the Matrix with one of its greatest challenges-controlling ideas that run counter to its current system of control. According to the blog, Wired, China, Burma, North Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba and Tunisia restrict internet access and often prosecute users for what they post online. The United States didn't make the list, but we are all aware of the National Security Agency's (NSA) unconstitutional monitoring of our online activity. The system simply cannot afford unfettered usage of such a dynamic and powerful tool-censorship will eventually be the order of the day.

Those of you who either have now been enlightened by this post, or who may already have known this information might ask, "Well what does one do about it?" which is a very good question (to which I have no answer). The most important thing to do in my estimation is to make as many people aware of this phenomenon as possible. After all, our participation, to a certain extent, has been voluntary-not that, should we all awake, it will continue to be.

Some of you may also say, "Well this concept that you've just introduced is an original thought-you're contradicting yourself." and I would have to disagree. What I've introduced, even if it was original (which it isn't), is merely an observation of what is occurring around us. It's no different than an archeologist observing some obscure tribe in the rain forest. His report isn't original, it's just an observation of something that has existed for hundreds of years, unbeknownst to the masses.

Faith-Based Nonsense

When I was 17 I joined the United States Air Force and, not long after my 18th birthday, I was shipped off to an air base in Spain. I admit I didn't know much about the world in which I'd just stepped into, but I was soon to discover how much I really didn't know. I did, however, possess a firm rooting in the teachings of religion. Born a baptist, I knew a majority of the biblical tales, but not much else.

In the military I was a law enforcement specialist (more commonly known as MP), and one day on my way to work I noticed that the names of the streets seemed to be alphabetical (Del Amo, Cadiz, Barajas, Alicante). When I arrived at the armory, I quickly went to a map of the base and discovered that all of the streets that ran north and south were alphabetized, and all of the streets that ran east and west were numbered (1st st., 2nd st., etc.). It was then that I realized that someone, not unlike myself, had logically planned this. And because military bases are nothing more than small cities, I concluded that someone had planned all of the cities I'd ever lived in. Soon after I began to understand the role of a city planner and all of those signs I used to see on people's front lawns that read John Doe for City Planner made sense.

"Where am I going with this?" you may ask yourself. Well, here it is: an individual should never have to

A. figure this out for themselves and,

B. find this out at the age of 18.

I don't recall this information EVER being taught in any class that I took-not even the ones I used to ditch (I did read the books even though I opted out of attending the class). But rest assured that somewhere, in some school in the United States of America, this information is being taught, and it is being taught to those who seem to be preselected and groomed to be the next city planners, city attorneys, mayors, police chiefs etc.

What does ANY of this have to do with religion? I'll answer that for you now-why is it that we put so much emphasis on teaching children religion when, unless you're going to be a minister of some sort, it doesn't benefit you one iota in building and maintaining a community. Most people don't even know who to turn to in their municipal, county, or even state and federal government when they have problems. But we know where the church is. I know this is going to rub some of you the wrong way, but I don't really know of a problem that you'll have that Jesus will really solve. Jesus couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't help the victims of Katrina. But I guarantee you if those in the Lower Ninth Ward knew how the political machine of New Orleans functioned and actively participated, they would have been better equipped to deal with the crisis. Most of our problems aren't God/Jesus made problems-they are the result of a man-made system vulnerable to mismanagement (either intentional or otherwise), greed, and corruption. In my most humble opinion, I don't think God is who you should turn to in these matters. I know it may pacify us emotionally to turn it all over to God, but while we're looking to God to solve problems we could solve ourselves, there are those who are lined up at the proper agencies making sure that they and theirs get the resources that are lawfully and rightfully theirs-and the lions share of what those who choose not to be politically active leave on the table. Communities are supposed to receive government funded services because these communities and municipalities pay taxes. Property taxes fund schools-other taxes fund other services. But if you're unaware of how the system works, you'll continue to pay taxes while those services are either under-funded or unfunded.

I don't blame the black community for not knowing these things-but I do fault them for contributing to their own insanity. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results. In recent history, the church has been nothing more than a tumor on our community. It extracts a minimum of 10% of income from its parishioners and contributes absolutely nothing but entertainment in return. It's modern-day snake oil. Walk in with your bible and a prayer (oh, and not to mention that 10% tithe)-walk out with all your problems solved. We all know that there isn't a place on the planet where this works-so why have we convinced ourselves that this is how it works in the church?

Quiet as it's kept, Jesus was a man of action, and all this singing, tithing, and praying we're doing would probably piss him off. It is one thing to have faith, but without action, it's useless. Yeah, I know the Christians now tout this very saying, but this is a new phenomenon.

Lastly, I think the worse thing a people can do is follow a dead guy whom they've never met, not quite sure what he really said, and most likely won't be back. The original followers of Jesus, some 2000 years ago also believed he'd be back-and some 2000 years later, he's yet to return. I can't think of a better way to paralyze a people than to have them sit idly awaiting the return of a deity when others around them get shit done. Do I believe in God? I don't know-nor do I think it matters. What I do believe is sitting around waiting for God to do for you what you can do for yourself is no better than sitting on your ass waiting on a government check you did nothing to earn. White people turn to God after they've done what needs to be done. They invent a monetary system first, and then lie and print In God We Trust on the back. They create a country, and then write a song asking God to bless it. Anything you ask God for, he's mostly likely put here already-all you need to do is stop asking him for shit and get up off your ass and go get it.

I'll leave you all with these two thoughts that hit me this morning and inspired this blog:

Amidst a cloud of ignorance, you can convince people that anything is possible, even when it is not.

and,

Faith is what we rely upon when we fear facing reality.

E'nuff said.

TPOKW?

Anna Deavere Smith

I once studied acting at a repertory in California and this phenomenal woman was my acting instructor. At the time I was too young to realize what a great instructor she was but in retrospect, I am awe-struck by her and wish I could have appreciated her instruction when I had the opportunity. On our first day of class, we all were to bring a monologue to recite and at the time I was reading I Tina, a book about Tina Turner's life with Ike. There was a chapter that described what Tina experienced the night when one of Ike's women shot herself in a bathroom. I decided to recite this passage. When I finished, Anna asked me, "Where have you studied acting before?" It was my first acting class, and at the time I felt she'd paid me the greatest compliment a teacher could bestow upon a student.

Pay close attention to her Korean Grocer bit. Exceptional!