Tag Archives: Race
Awakenings
Please view this video and leave a comment regarding how the injustice that Emmett Louis Till experienced is relatable to more recent black deaths.
Mental Health in the Black Community: Strategies for Being Black and Sane While Craziness Swirls Around You
Please join MRCi (Manhood, Race, and Culture interactive) tonight (October 15, 2020) at 7:30 (EST) — 6:30 pm (CST) for an important program on Mental Health in Black America.
Mental Health practitioner Sister Misty Chanel Pruitt will present via Zoom on Mental Health in the Black Community: Strategies for being Black and Sane While Craziness Swirls Around You. Please join us to learn strategies to keep you sane in the midst of everyday craziness.
The program begins tonight at 7:30 (EST) — 6:30 pm (CST). Please click here to join us.
What the GET YOUR BOOTY TO THE POLL initiative tells us about apolitical black males
- Please join us tonight (10/8/2020) @ 7:30 EST — 6:30 CST as we discuss this topic. Click here to gain entry.
Although it may be difficult to believe, I have moments where black males of all ages challenge my sanity. Trust me when I say that the words of trusted friend William A. Foster IV’s comment that
The black intellectual is the loneliest person on the planet
resonates within my soul. In this era of “wokeness,” my encounters with black men who prefer to pontificate about irrelevant revisionist history topics instead of developing liberation are increasing.
Experience has taught me that some Black males have doused themselves in outlandish conspiracy theories and revisionist history interpretations informed by nothing more than ridiculous half-baked YouTube and Facebook videos. I have learned that such people prefer unproductive conversations that hide their cowardice behind crazy talk and unrealistic goals. I am convinced that if Frederick Douglass were alive, he would address these loud-mouth phrasemongers with the following admonishment.
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
I am confident that not even Frederick Douglass could move such people beyond endless discussions of irrelevant historical facts that hold no potential to liberate blacks.
Such people foolishly believe that their careless talk paints them as a formidable opponent to mighty whites. The alluded to idiocy is an obvious sign of their unwillingness to abandon their rabble-rousing in favor of meaningful politics. I have tired of planting black liberation seeds in barren soil.
It appears as if I am not the only one frustrated with black males’ disengagement with the political arena. As the 2020 election season approaches, the usual groundswell of getting out the Vote is occurring. Predictably, few of these endeavors target black male voters.
My how things have changed
The latest group to address this issue of getting black males to the Poll are exotic dancers. Yes, you read that correctly, a rising tide of exotic dancers are imploring apolitical black men to get their booty to the Poll.
The women behind Get Your Booty to the Poll may be able to reach black men who have ignored standard voter registration drive initiatives. This latest effort to get out the black male vote is innovative, intriguing, and problematic.
Although the Get Your Booty to the Poll effort is notable, it raises troubling questions regarding why some black males are so afraid to confront other groups on the political battlefield? The prophetic words of Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago-branch of the Black Panther Party, should haunt many black males. According to Hampton,
War is nothing but politics with bloodshed, and politics is nothing but war without bloodshed.
I reserve the coward label for extreme circumstances.
How strange would it be if the missing ingredient in getting black males to the Poll is booty cheeks? Most of us could never fathom that instead of political education classes and voter registration drives, our efforts would have been much more productive had we used sultry black women to swing on poles with the words “Vote! Vote!” on their left and right cheeks?
The above leads me to ask the following question.
Have black males fallen into a bottomless abyss of foolishness and political ineptitude?
It is incredibly disappointing that our best hope to grasp the attention of apolitical black males is by writing the word Vote on the booty cheeks of scantily clad strippers. Lord knows that I wish that we weren’t in the midst of such an important political season; however, this moment mandates unprecedented voter turnout for apparent reasons. It appears that the nation’s future direction may be determined by how many black males are coaxed into a voting booth by booty cheeks.
I guess that in the end, a vote is a vote after all.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.
Can Whites Who Adopt Black Children be Racist?: The Case of Amy Coney Barrett vs. Ibrahim X Kendi
It is frightening to consider how one’s words, thoughts, and ideas can be misconstrued. At the present moment, there is ample evidence that many people who oppose your political stance or perspective on substantive matters are engaged in a fanatical search to find something, anything, to “cancel” a profound voice articulating a truth that makes them uncomfortable.
Ibrahim X. Kendi is the latest figure to come under such an attack. Just in case you missed it, Kendi recently came under fire for issuing the following commentary aimed at Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.
To truly understand this intellectual skirmish, it is important that one understands that Barrett adopted two Haitian children. An action that many have attempted to use as ample evidence that the Supreme Court nominee can not be biased regarding racial matters. Kendi has rightfully questioned the logic of those who have used the adoption as a springboard that hurls them past this nation’s significant racial problems.
Although the attacks on Kendi are born of political opportunism by unreasonable people who oppose his political stance and cultural views. More important than the relatively pedestrian attacks hurled at Ibrahim X Kendi are what they reveal about the presence of what can be best termed historical illiteracy. I believe that it is historical illiteracy that guarantees America’s inability to destroy racial bias.
If those who rushed forward to issue an attack against Kendi were conversant in this nation’s history of racial conflict, they would have censored themselves. Anyone who has ever studied domestic race relations in even a passing manner will tell you that there is nothing scandalous about the comments that sparked this unnecessary battle between Kendi and droves of whites.
Ironically, the most efficient path to explaining Kendi’s point that the mere adoption of a child of color does not mean a white person cannot be racist is by examining the catalyst that motivated white abolitionists in their struggle to abolish chattel slavery.
If only I had a dollar for each time, I have explained to audiences and students that opposition to slavery is not the same as believing in racial equality. Most are shocked to hear that it is not only possible but predictable that white abolitionists found the psychological space necessary to oppose slavery while maintaining the deplorable belief that Blacks were intellectually inferior, if not an entirely different species. One needs to look no further than the following quip made by an abolitionist who revealed in the public arena that his fight to end slavery had very little to do with the plight of blacks.
If God is just!!!! And I believe that he is!!!!!! We will burn in hell for this shit!!!!!
The above assertion highlights the reality that the motivations behind a person’s actions are not always obvious.
Hence, it should not be difficult to understand the validity of Kendi’s questioning the simpleton logic that Amy Coney Barrett’s laudable decision to adopt two Haitian children does not mean that she immune from viewing the world through lenses that vacillate between white privilege and white supremacy.
The act of inter-racial adoption does not remove the racially biased socialization that all Americans, including blacks, have experienced in this nation. There is no reasonable argument that explains how any American could have been socialized by mainstream society and not been impacted by a biased school curriculum, entertainment industry, and media. We have all been impacted by these pernicious evils. I long ago settled on the fact that it is nearly impossible to be socialized in America and not be infected by some form of racial bias regardless of one’s racial identity.
So, I must stand on the side of Ibrahim X Kendi and cast a side-eye gaze at all who believe that the adoption of a child of color removes racial bias from their mental state. After-all, racial bias has been a fixture in this nation longer than baseball and mom’s Apple Pie.
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture 2020.