Questions on Blackness

Do you ever find yourself answering questions without thinking? It is as if you're so used to the same conversation that the answers spill from your lips unconsciously. I have, on many occasions, been involved in these mindless situations. The catch to it is the person asking the question is genuine and rightly concerned but the answer, to myself, is generic. There are so many people who don't know and have to be told where to start and have the same thoughts. There is a serious brainwashing that happened and becoming aware has been the new thing to do.

Questions on Blackness are the new fad. As if people in Black skin are reaching a tipping point and wanting to be in the know. Books have been written for years on this subject and only a few have been putting eyes to words. I am finding people who know enough to carry a valid opinion and those who need to re-learn because of their school taught education. I've been brushing up on new facts and details just so my answers can seem less regurgitated. We're an opinion based society but one should not doubt proven fact. The point of learning is to be open-minded and question what you need to be understood. Lately people have been depending on the interpretation of others rather than reading the same source and forming their own conclusions. But there has also been people just searching for a debate that may not end with them understanding the point.

There are those who have compiled a list of reading materials for those who are looking for answers to their questions on Blackness. For those who tend to deter from reading books, the Internet is a tremendous resource in learning anything. Some examples of what I have read so far:

1. They Came Before Columbus
2. Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
3. The Fire Next Time
4. Stolen Legacy
5. The Destruction of Black Civilization
6. Images of Color, Images of Crime

I have people ask me what I feel once I have read books about the history of black people and I do have an answer. I am upset with my educators (my general education teachers and professors). I would have liked for my educators to at least share the extensive knowledge that I am now obtaining. Is it that they didn't genuinely know these details or they didn't feel the need to share information?

Recently I have stopped lumping every single Black American in the same category and come to the realization it is quite impossible for one race to be cohesive. The human aspect of it all has damaged that thought. While we're lumping every Black person in our statements of helping the race we have failed to realize the human aspect. Not everyone will be on the same page but we must do the work for those that are.

40 Books for 2014

Reading is my thing. For as long as ever, I wanted to be a writer and I loved to read. Books hold a plethora of knowledge hidden between covers. I am guilty of judging a book by it's cover but there is a method to my madness. I read a lot whether magazines, newspapers or articles on the Internet.  Finding myself lacking in novels and books that I can learn from, I had to make a decision. The decision was to read as many novels as I can in a year but I also set a limit. To read 40 books in 12 months, 52 weeks or 365 days was a challenge I accepted for myself. There were ups and downs, books that were hard to understand, books that were straightforward, books that were difficult to get through and books finished just as quickly as I started them. The feeling of accomplishment after reading the last page and word was euphoric. The complete list is located at the bottom.

My top five of the 40 books are:

1. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

3. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

4. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

5. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

I challenge others to read more than 10 books in 2015 and keep challenging yourself to read more. For this new year my goal is 50 books and I have already started.

Until the end of the year!

My 40 Books for 2014

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
2. Flatland
3. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and The Literary Imagination
4. Parable of the Sower
5. In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women
6. The Heart of a Woman
7. Kindred
8. Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now
9. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
10. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
11. Looking for Alaska
12. A Long Way Gone
13. Getting to Happy
14. Giovanni's Room
15. Song of Solomon
16. Caucasia
17. Wild Seed
18. Mind of My Mind
19. Clay's Ark
20. Patternmaster
21. Passing
22. The Phoenix and the Carpet
23. The White Boy Shuffle
24. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
25. The Mis-Education of the Negro
26. Mumbo Jumbo
27. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
28. The White Tiger
29. Tar Baby
30. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
31. Dreaming in Cuban
32. Tuff
33. A Song Flung Up To Heaven
34. One Crazy Summer
35. Brown Girl, Brownstones
36. Jonah's Gourd Vine
37. Jazz
38. The Fire Next Time 
39. Cane
40. Animal's People

All photos courtesy of CheVenyke Photos

My Killing Rage

Elementary school teachers drilled the importance of Martin Luther King Jr. and his philosophy of nonviolence in my impressionable mind. Middle and high school teachers introduced the “by any means necessary” ode of Malcolm El-Hajj Shabazz (Malcolm X). Undergrad abandoned me and forced me to survive on my own through the autobiography of Assata Shakur. Life opened a grave new spectrum, filled with anger, inequality, injustice and a fading history. Day to day activities held police brutality, racism and sexism. Each aspect of my growth enhanced my killing rage.

Yes, we have come a long way from slavery but blacks are still looked at as three-fifths human. We have proven time and time again our capabilities of being seen as equal but there is embedded hatred for our uprising. bell hooks' essay “Killing Rage” has inspired me to express my own rage toward the white male patriarchal system and its continued oppression. Black men have the "John Henry" effect where even the scrawny are seen to have the ability to beat the machine. The sharp number of ignorant whites and blacks have fed the system of what we are living today. The education system is the first wave of artillery.

The implementation of the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” has started the destruction of an importance of creativity and the wonderment of imagination. The average parent is now forced to work an eight hour shift and fill-in the massive blanks that the education system is starting to leave out. After-school programs are getting cut, the arts are being excess from the budget and passing a test is more important than a real history lesson. Everything is systematic if we like it or not. There is always a means to an end. The powers that be are creating efforts to change and modify education are not doing it with a kind heart. There are no lessons that teach real world experiences and the ability to create your own.

Our past heroes had the right idea pertaining to integration but we had to succumb to the education system that omitted our history. We had to assimilate into a society that didn't care about the outcome of our intelligence. Years passed by of continued brainwashing and subliminal messages, clouding the judgment and leaving an impression on our youth. I have noticed that the disconnection between society and those in charge is unreal. People want us to see things as colorless but blackness is reminded in every negative way possible. Our positive images are infiltrated and the chosen few have become brainwashed.

Why does every day have to be a fight when it comes to embracing culture?

What exactly is the right way?

Every individual has a unique definition of normal and shouldn't be afraid to embrace their existence. The poor neighborhoods are ransacked with patrol cars and beat cops. The search for every infraction is magnetized in the “slums.” Rich crime is overlooked and to the masses seems as if crime can be paid off.

Why is the poor under attack from those who are supposed to protect and serve?

To be poor in the United States is to be criminalized and condemned by the powers that be. I wonder how can an officer of the law who may have been born in a poor neighborhood and environment surrender to persecuting their people. We are being taught to fend for self and to leave the community behind.

Where did we lose our humanity?

Where is the pay it forward attitude of the past?

Civil rights leaders were not thinking standards during their fight. They were focused on changing the future. Within changing the future something went awry and we’re faced with this present police nation. The thing that perplexes me the most is the people who don’t want to see the connection with race. They are the people who side with happenstance when the numbers show facts and coincidence.

There will always be questions with so many and no answers. We have to prepare for the future and the ones will obtain the power of change. My killing rage may or may not be justified but I, like the community of Ferguson, am tired of the injustice and inequality. Embrace your killing rage, be the change you want to see and pay it forward.

What I Am Made Of

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, W.I.

I have been told that I'm neglecting a part of me. I have been neglecting something "that I am made of." I was born to an immigrant mother and father making me first generation American. My biological father wasn't around while I was growing up. I had a father figure who wasn't the best but did just enough to leave an impression. My mother flew from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, West Indies in 1977 embarking on something different. I was born 10 years later to her and my two older brothers. Her background is my heritage. My grandmother was born in Saint Vincent and her grandmother hailed from Calcutta, India.

I always have been enticed for fighting for the equal treatment of my race, gender and to all inequality. Most of my essays are about fighting the good fight and living as a cohesive unity of people. A good friend of mine, who is of Indian descent via the South American country of Guyana, always seems to point out my non-acknowledgment of my Indian heritage. Maybe I have been a little shortsighted and only focused on my Blackness but I know that in order for me to know my truth I must fight for all of me.

Calcutta (Kolkata), India

Calcutta or Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal in India. It is a world in itself. It is the center of East India and home to 4.5 million people. The first record of the history of Calcutta is from 1690. Calcutta seemed to always have been the business center of East Indian because it is where most trading went on. The richness of the city has rooted it as a metropolis.With the rise of invasions and occupying of land in the 1850's, Calcutta was split in two: Black Town and White Town. Black Town housed Indians and of course Blacks while White Town consisted of the invader British. Already industrious and business-centered, there was a boom in industrial growth and natural resource causing the British to invest in the city's continued growth. Eventually Calcutta became the center of the fight for independence from any type of foreign rule. 

After the city's victory of it's independence it began to flourish and maintain on its own. During World War II the city was bombed by the Japanese causing grave damage to the city's infrastructure. This lead to the downhill factors of living during the time. Millions of people starved to death and thousands killed from the tug-of-war of power between people who craved solitary rule. Calcutta was dubbed, "the dying city," during its time of despair. The people there were resilient though. The city would become a base for Indian communism and build from within its walls. 

I don't know when my great-great grandmother left Calcutta and ventured to the West Indian island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Her family had a reason for the move and so is life. In Saint Vincent a young woman of Indian descent started her life and had children. One of her daughters will eventually give birth to my mother. My mother spent her childhood and part of her adulthood around contact of her lineage. She was able to listen to the stories and the wisdom that comes with age. I have passed down tales and actual moments from vague memories. Even with the little information, I wouldn't trade knowing something for anything in the world. 

One day while working, an Ethiopian woman asked me if was Ethiopian and of course I said no. Coincidence is a crazy thing and that moment stuck on my mind. I told my mother of the incident and she would go on to tell me Indians migrated to Ethiopia. This new information made me wonder just what else is my truth. There will always be so much to learn when it comes to an individual's history, we just have to accept that we didn't get here alone. Our ancestors went through worse conditions than we did because of the lack of technology and advanced knowledge but they knew how to survive and maintain.       

Here I am writing about what I am made of. This is me writing about a part of me that I have neglected over time. It isn't to appease my friend but to come to terms with my truth. In order to know who you are truly you must embrace every part of you. I'm sure there is more to the lineage but this is one that is still with me to this day. Eventually the blood will dilute, the lineage would get further away and each new generation will forget.

Never be afraid to embrace who you are. It is important to know your history. Be the representative of "what you are made of."