I suppose this fallen oak tree is going through the natural cycle of decay. At first, it sprouted new growth and, after a while, the new growth died. Now, the decaying wood is hosting plants like poke weed. Nature is fascinating!
Too many of us believe that the Interregnum, mid-1960s to circa 2000, would lead to a better outcome for us Blacks. And that is because this country has fed us the lie as truth and we did not do primary research to debunk the lie. I was one of them until Barack Obama was elected president. Any blinders I had about the ugly soul of this country were cleared of the debris of hope. I dismissed the Tea Party because they had some sane colleagues or colleagues who did not believe it in their best interest to align themselves with them. I thought the rational colleagues would prevail. I was wrong. Where there is emotion, there is no logic. That was a hard lesson for me.
Measles, screwworm, Ebola–what is next? Oh yes, COVID is still present and evolving…food recalls because of contamination are increasing…drought…wildfires… And the low, low class sad excuses for persons-in-charge build a arena to showcase the fake wrestling matches created to entertain the ignorant masses .
Why do voters vote for these no-character, misogynistic white males? Maine had a woman candidate who did not have the baggage of a white male whose interactions with women are suspect and has a tattoo that aligns with Nazi/fascism. More of the same rot that is already in D.C.
I wonder why some people stayed in the South. Land ownership? Taking care of elders? Hopelessness? In my family, relatives didn’t begin leaving until the 1940s and 1950s. Most, on my mother’s side moved to take manufacturing jobs in the Midwest…Indianapolis, Kokomo, Chicago, Kalamazoo. On my father’s side, most ended up in California…Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. On my father’s side, I don’t think any of them worked manufacturing jobs. Small business, movie industry…hustling? There were few females on my father’s side. One worked for State government, one was a beautician, and another was a housewife. I remember my father saying that one of his sisters may have taught elementary school for a short while. When she got married, she would have been forced to quit. Some of the males went into the military. Only one or two that I know of made a career of the military.
So if you are a sycophant, a person who commits treason, a criminal, the United States has plenty of money to give you. But if you need food, medical, or housing assistance, this country is too broke to help you. Millions of dollars to send to Israel, Argentina, and other countries, but no money for its citizens whose money is being sent to these other countries. While the rockets red glare is the tax-payer funded rockets of the oligarchs crashing to earth.
This country tells us over and over again that Black lives don’t matter. In the past week, a Black teenager who was defending himself was sentenced to a long sentence for the death of a white teenager who started the altercation. In another case, an Asian storeowner chased a Black teenager and shot him in the back because he thought he was stealing a bottle of water. The Black teenager did not. Doesn’t matter…the Asian walks free. (There is a boycott of Asian businesses in the Black community. Should have happened long ago. These Asian business take our money and give absolutely nothing back to the Black community.) That’s on top of the suspicious Black deaths by hanging that the police rule suicide. But we hear over and over from the talking heads that this country is not racist. Even though the same talking heads glorify white supremacy. Make the hypocrisy make sense.
And an evil, evil racist white male is now a trillionaire. I think that’s all poor white people see–evil people are rich. Therefore, I will be evil and be rich, too. They’re too ignorant to understand that these rich white males’ families had money or their access to money was facilitated by someone with money who had some connection to their family. Networking among the rich. They did not depend on bootstraps. The secret of a great fortune made without apparent cause is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed… Honoré Balzac Or the agencies that should have prosecuted the crime had been bribed to turn a blind eye or so corrupt that crimes by a certain segment of the population were never prosecuted.
Is it just Southerners who are so stupid that they don’t realize that any untested use of land and resources like data centers might have a negative impact…think toxic sites that need clean-up from manufacturing and other uses. Sites where all of a sudden there is no money from local, state, or federal governments for the clean-up and persons living near the toxic site have long-term health problems that no one is responsible for or will pay for. Remember sites like Love Canal–all good until it wasn’t. No jobs, toxic land and water, and silence as the wildlife is gone and the water is poisoned. But some company made a profit…and left the costs for anyone but them, the perpetrators. These companies will drain the South of clean water and poison the land and they will leave the sick people, the toxic environment behind. And these stupid ignorant people who live in the South will wait wheezing for the next corporate grift.
Reminds me of the tax breaks given Dell computer–the promise of a certain number of jobs…high paying jobs(?). And what did Nashville get–initial hiring and a steady decline in those jobs. It’s the corporate M.O.–wash, rinse, repeat until the corporate grift doesn’t work anymore and the next thing one hears is that the company has moved its operations to foreign shores. But, maybe, Dell is different.
Amazon also got tax incentives and warehouses have been or are being built. I don’t know if these jobs pay a living wage. I have been surprised at the cost of living in this area which, from the complaints I am hearing, appears to be rising faster than wages.
Watched a video–Sunn m’Cheaux–a Harvard linguistics professor, specializing in the Gullah language. The video was about an English-Nigerian actor who is acting the role of Bass Reeves. (A Black man, a former Slave who lived his life in the United States and freed himself by escaping to Indian territory, and a U.S. Marshall on whom the Lone Ranger of television fame was modeled.) This actor had the ignorance to say that the Black southern accent is a holdover from our Nigerian ancestry with a dollop of subservience flavoring it. He doesn’t have the knowledge to know that we who ended up in the United States came from all over the continent of Africa, that our ancestors were severely punished for speaking their native language, and because of that we would have been speaking Dutch, English with accents from Ireland, Scotland, England, and not the educated accents…the accents of the commoners who settled in the United States, French, etc. After the first generation, unless there was a group from a specific place that remained together like the Gullahs, any accent from the Continent would have been lost.
You know when someone is crying, you do not know if the tears arise from anger, happiness, or sadness. Well, from living in the South most of my life, the undercurrent I hear in the Black Southern accent, especially when we’re code-switching, is well-concealed rage. Rage that we have to deal with the ignorance that controls our livelihoods, where we live, whether we are safe in our homes…the rage of knowing that the barbarians surround you and you best have your head on swivel. I hear and see the “Fuck you” in the “Yes, massah” and the downcast eyes and the intelligence required to survive.
Africans, Caribbeans…all these skinfolks I see on You Tube making money from the trials and tribulations of we who live in the United States. Most have no idea of the why of the incident they’re reporting. But they know they will get clicks and clicks mean money.
Hollywood treats all persons with our skin color, our physiognomy as interchangeable. So, of course, if a foreign born Black person is cheaper to hire, the native born Black person will not be hired. But in the United States, there is something more at work. There is a concerted effort to instill in the native born Black person that we are not good enough. That any Black person from anywhere else is worthy of white approval, adjacency, and economic support. And these different groups of Black persons are played by the whites as the different groups fall in and out of favor. Bottom line, the formerly colonized have no understanding of the formerly enslaved. (Because the Slavery in the Caribbean was so different from the Slavery in the United States, I group the Black Caribbean with the Colonized African. Also, the Blacks in the Caribbean were often from the same area of the Continent and many were able to retain some language and traditions from the Continent.)
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O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last… Shakespeare
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