With all that’s going on in the world, the rise of populism and the far right, I got to thinking what will become of the people of my race.

Thinking of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and the whole far right machine, the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker The Berry” are bouncing around:

You hate me don’t you?
You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture
You’re fuckin’ evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey
You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me.

And also knocking around in my head, strangely for a few months now, are the words of Raoul Silva, a character in James Bond’s Skyfall.

Hello, James. Welcome. Do you like the island? My grandmother had an island. Nothing to boast of. You could walk around it in an hour, but still it was, it was a paradise for us. One summer, we went for a visit and discovered the place had been infested with rats. They’d come on a fishing boat and gorged themselves on coconut. So how do you get rats off an island? Hmm? My grandmother showed me. We buried an oil drum and hinged the lid. Then we wired coconut to the lid as bait and the rats would come for the coconut and… they would fall into the drum. And after a month, you have trapped all the rats, but what do you do then? Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it and they begin to get hungry. And one by one…
[mimics rat munching sound]
Raoul Silva: they start eating each other until there are only two left. The two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees, but now they don’t eat coconut anymore. Now, they only eat rat. You have changed their nature. The two survivors. This is what she made us.

To be blunt, black on black crime is the equivalent of the rats eating each other. And in a more subtle sense when our environment is being controlled we have to be careful not to fall into the harmful practices that are open to us. Not just black on black crime, but crime in general, drugs, abuse, low self-esteem, lack of ambition. Make no mistake, there is a plan at work, and the powers that be in society are controlling black people in many ways (housing, finance, education, justice, work, etc) and similar practices are being waged against any non-white minority, and even some minority white cultures in ny predominant white society.

What’s the aim of this control? In my view it is to create a manipulative underclass that can be blamed, used and discarded. The justification being, such people with low worth are of no moral value to anyone. Does this sound familiar? Doesn’t it sound like slavery? Let’s not really take the bait that slavery is behind us. In the USA in particular the judiciary is the net and the prison system the ships hold, which is in many cases punishing the innocent, those who can’t afford representation and those guilty of minor crimes with forced labour contracted out to big companies who profit even more through the use of a workforce that costs them nothing or next to nothing to exploit.

It’s not just about unfair treatment and inequality, it’s much deeper – it’s about changing the nature of our race, just like turning the rats from attacking anything other than themselves because of their limitations, so it is with black people, we are limited and hampered and undermined in all kinds of ways, generation after generation this affects our DNA, we are born into a system which we expect to treat us this way, and our natural responses to it become tailored to fit it, conform to it, and even to perpetuate it.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

The far right definitely hates black people, Donald Trump calls the Confederate statues beautiful symbols of America’s past and history. Every form of pseudo-slavery, and even the real thing, if it were to occur again, which I believe it could if people do not wake up to the cancer in our midst, stems right back to the fact that even though the Confederacy was ruled as having lost the war in the USA and in the vast majority of the world slavery is outlawed, there is a living, evolving subtext to that fight that keeps digging in its viper-like fangs into society to ever remind us, it isn’t dead yet!

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X both to a some degree failed in their efforts to emancipate black people from the nefarious power of white domination over the black race.  This Al Jazerra program details their effect on society. Arguably they were both killed

Today we are not equal, in the workplace there is a glass ceiling proportionately few black people ever penetrate, in terms of housing, schooling – black people tend to grow accommodate the lower class end of the spectrum, financially to we can be disadvantaged, and this leads into issues around justice and brutality – where the same sorry stories that were being told of black people being killed by police, still occur today.

How can we overcome the terror, the devoutness, the hypocrisy, the conceit, the arrogance, the brutality, the inhumanity, and the dominance of white people – generally, because not all partake in it, but for those that do of this social structure that dehumanises black people and relegates us to being second class citizens?

Is it by being a gangsta, terrorising people of your own race and others – being the hungriest animal out there, the meanest, the basest, and the richest?  However bad you are, there is always someone more bad than you – and failing that there is an army of law enforcement to content with. Who can enjoy life when always having to look over your shoulder and be on your guard?

Should we claim that we are better than white people, forget white supremacy, lets talk black supremacy! No, believe me, white people, with all the power they have and the institutions they control are haunted every day by the fact that they aren’t superior. It’s only a social construct that allows people to THINK they are superior, and perhaps have others think that too, but it is as safe as a house of cards.  How could the black race think it could forge such an idiotic construct that would apply to us with all the societal problems we have? No, surely, all people are equal – no race is superior, people are people.

Is it by turning the other cheek?  How many times can someone look the other way and allow injustice to be practiced against them?  Yahshua or Jesus says forgive 70 times in a day, which I am told means to continually forgive, and practically it does mean that – but this applies to someone who you can show their fault and they repent of it, even if they repeat the mistake again over and over.  Like a child who you tell not to cuss or swear, but they do it and are sorry, and promise not to do it again, but they still do, and you have to reinforce and repeat to them not to do it over and over again – maybe one day it will sink in.  However, for the person who you show their fault and the do not repent, they can’t admit that what they did or do was wrong, and they will carry on regardless, Yahshua (Jesus) says treat them like a pagan or a tax collector – i.e. historically at that time a figure of contempt.

You see, that is what this cultural formation of racism, implicit bias and “Black Monothought” represents, in its worst guide a stubborn refusal to admit anything is wrong with a pattern of thinking that relegates people to second class citizens based on the colour of their skin.  So for me it seems like black people have to treat people who display an attitude of Black Monothought is to pour contempt out on them.

If you’re violent, you will quickly be picked up by the law enforcement authorities and be labelled as a troublemaker, violent, maybe mad and get yourself institutionalised. If you think the black race is superiuror, who are you fooling?  If you’re trying to turn the other cheek all the time, the enemy will happily walk all over you because he sees no resistance.

Contempt is resistance, when you show it people who have that disgusting attitude toward you, they will be taken aback, you see the surprise in their faces, they think twice, they check themselves like they’ve just walked through the wrong door into a place they didn’t expect to be. Contempt isn’t just disapproval, it stings and it burns, it is like acid to the mind and conscience of such a one that holds these racist or implicit bias laden views, that leaves a mark and slowly erodes the corruption that is there, and as black people we need to become skilled in the art of contempt, so that the drip, drip effect of its application washes clean the minds of those who are taken by it.

Truly, practising contempt for such people will make them better people, without meaningless violence, without the futile assertion of black superiority, without the implicit self-defeating action of turning the other cheek, but rather with the power of our mind, knowing who you are, and your value, your right to be respected, your right to expose the flawed opinions of people who expose their own inhumanity when they see you as been less than human, yes by exercising your right outwardly, to speak and show a reaction born of truth, wisdom and logic expressed in contempt, we defeat lies, stupidity and the illogical!

The Guardian on Malcolm X’s assanination
Washington’s Blog on civil verdict on Martin Luther King’s assaination

A black guy questioning a dubious police stop in the USA (video)

Al Jazeera broadcast a shocking tale of the people’s troubles in Namibia. The Skulls of My People retells the anguish of families ripped apart by the German’s capacity to look on other humans as mere lab rats for experimentation.

I think that black people have always been seen as sub-human by many white and asian people, and it is difficult living in a world and having to daily fight against these past tales of inhumanity practiced against people, I see as related to me, and against such prejudice and implicit bias in the present day.

As a black man living in a predominantly white society, you have to work to keep your mind free of the bias that is constantly levelled at you, that bias that believes you are inferior, that permeates every aspect of culture, that is institutionalised, that sours justice, that bribes authority, and is even preached from the pulpit.   Like an astronaut that has to don a suit to protect himself from a lack of oxygen when he ventures outside of his space ship, so is it with black people who live in a white society. We need this armour to protect us from the lack of empathy, lack of respect, the justice – just out of reach, and the lack of humanity displayed towards us, that wants to draw the very last breath of our spirit and leave us either compliant or dead in the dust.

I’m going to call this phenomenon “Black Monothought”, this encompasses all racial prejudice, implicit bias, institutional racism, racial disadvantage in terms of property, finances, work prospects, schooling, biases systems of law and justice and cultural artefacts that are aimed like primed spears at the black consciousness to dumb us down and keep us “in place”.  Black Monothought is a one-dimensional view of black people that sees us as the other, the lesser, unequal, and ultimately as sub-human.

It is my view that black people need to be very aware of Black Monothought, and to work expose it and collectively, critique, debunk, demonize, and correct its every manifestation, document it and preach it, until rings in the perpetrators ears like a deafening cry of warriors of war seizing victory, who with precision of attitude, skill, wit and justice will overthrow the stronghold of Black Monothoght, even that which is genetically programmed into its perpetrators being.  Black Monothought is like a weed in your garden, if you let it grow, it will destroy the good plants you cherish.

Black people need to organise and be collective. Like Public Enemy said a long time ago, “you gotta fight the powers that be”, but at the same time, one man cannot overcome a system that is stronger than himself, it takes a collective of people with time, resource and knowledge.  if we are going to do this we have to do it right or it will not work at all.

I caught the tail end of an article on the BBC news where in an article, newspaper columnist, Kelvin MacKenzie had likened Ross Barkley (who is white) to gorilla, and as it turned out later, Barkley’s father was Nigerian. Apparently MacKenzie wasn’t aware of this at the time – however for me that’s not the issue, neither are the other crass and insensitive comments MacKenzie made in the article, not only about Barkley, but sweeping generalisations about people from Liverpool.

My issue, is why in 2017, the media deems it to be valid to reflect a link between a man, beyond the notion of his physique, but focused on his ancestry, with a gorilla?

We fear gorillas not only because of their domineering physical presence, but because they are animals and we can’t communicate or reason with them. Are we in 2017 still… still wanting to portray this attitude toward people of African descent?

There may have been an unwitting comment by MacKenzie, but what worries me more is the media machine, indeed reflective of common modes of thought in society, that falls back on thinking that must be at least 500 years old, when by now today, we should really know better.

I’m sure if a tribe of people lived with gorillas for hundreds of years and shared a common language, both the gorillas and the tribe would know by that time the true characteristics of each other. It is strange that some white people, as exemplified by the media fuss around this story, have not realised the true characteristics of black people – even today with all the different modes of communication and translation we have.

There is something else at play here, which shows a contempt for our common history, the benefit of hindsight, and this reflects the kind of sometimes ignorant, but always blind prejudice that exists in the fabric of society, and forms part of that amorphous, metaphysical and cultural construct that manacles the black mind and sets the white mind on an undeserved pedestal.

Darcus Howe,

Impassioned speaker and civil rights activist died today. He had a quick mind a sharp tongue to cut through the flimsy arguments of those who esposed racist views.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39473698

I don’t understand why it still exists, but I feel it in my mind and in my soul, that weighty feeling, like being stuck in hours of traffic, that feeling that your progress is being blocked, its that tiresome feeling that unfortunately occurs whenever I interact with some white people, that surfaces because they think they are superior to me, just because they are white.

Even my forefathers who were probably slaves were not inferior to the greatest white person who has ever lived on this planet.

My ancestors before Slavery who were Africans were not inferior to the conquerors that invaded their lands.

The aggression perpetrated by the white race against black people throughout history and in the present day is born of a feeling of superiority, and whether that feeling comes from narcissism, fear, greed, pride or any other notion – it isn’t factual, it is a feeling that has been reinforced by the following cultural and social institutions or constraints:

• Colonialism
• Slavery
• Religious hegemony
• Apartheid/Segregation
• Discrimination
• Inequality

Any rational person can look at that list and can see the injustice that lies behind any term in it. So for me there is a conceit, a blindness, an arrogance and ultimately an irrationality associated with those white people who believe they are superior to black people, and the reverse is true, bring any race or nation of people into the same framework and the truth still holds.

The notion of superiority is a social construct that feeds off a slanted view history and historical injustice which seeks to perpetrate that injustice in the present. Why would you pride yourself on the effects of your ancestors inhumanity in the past to perpetuate a notion of elevated status in the present and believe yourself to be superior, especially when in the presernt day we condemn nations that try to mimic those inhumane actions done in the past?

Is it really a case of, when my race or country did this inhumane act in the past – it was ok, but when your race or country attempts to do that same inhumane act, even if on potentially a much smaller scale, it’s a serious crime that should be abhorred?  Equality and justice isn’t just about how we treat others now, it is also about how we frame the past and how that helps us contextualize the present.

Today in general terms white people and the Western World fear Muslims – people talk of feeling like they live in a different country because of the influx of immigrants. Let’s not be blind, there are Muslim terrorists and there are illegal immigrants, but the proportion of those people in the whole of those populations that live in our lands now is small – and that’s not to say that very small minority can’t do harm either.

The point I want to get at however, is that one needs to compare the situation now – where people already feel threatened, where we allow people to come into our lands in a controlled manner – and where those who force their way in find it very difficult, with the situation where a land is brutally pillaged and over-run by an invader.  What we have now in the Western World doesn’t compare with Colonialism or the institutions that followed it.

If society now feels threatened by groups of people on the fringe of it that disrupt and challenge the core of society because of their beliefs and cultures (e.g. Muslims and immigrants), consider the threat felt by a minority group of people in a society who face institutions that have existed for perhaps hundreds of years that suppress them that are already a core part of the society in which they live.

Consider the lasting impact to a society or race of people transformed by an event in their history that, not through their own choice, or as a consequence of anything they have done leads them to be mistreated, and the mark of their future is the branding of their mistreatment in the past, and upon their burden more inequality and injustice is cast to perpetuate the sting of the past in an endless cycle of cause and effect.

So many people fail to see the bigger picture, or see such thinking as an excuse.  However, if we divorce the condition of people in the present day from their historical context, then we arrive at false conclusions. Dismissiveness of people’s history can never erase the inhumanity of that history, either on the part of the perpetrator, or the people who have suffered – neither can it truly deal with the reality of the present.

To the superior I ask – if you are so good, and superior why are you keeping me down? Why are you holding me back? What stops you from letting me be free?  Don’t the qualities that you think you have enable you to rise up, without limiting me? Can you build a nation by yourselves without exploiting me, without injustice to my people, and without economic imperialism?

I can do well even you try to suppress me, I can do better with your support. As a society, equality and justice nurtures the best out of people, it creates an environment where the best things become possible because the life-blood of society, ideas, effort, expression, power, wealth etc are open to all equally, and we all share in building a future equally.

To me, equality and justice must exist as absolute things, or they simply doesn’t exist at all.  Indeed, the only way to heal the past is through equality and justice, and that’s why I have absolutely no time for anybody who thinks they are superior.