Yes, I'm A Narrow Minded Black Nationalist

Where is the North American African Nation?

Pan Africanism is great as per internationalism. The African Union of the Diaspora is fine as per internationalism, but where is the apparatus of the Nation of North American Africans? Where is your sovereignty, self determination. How can one even accept Pan Africanism without nationalism. Yet, every African in Africa is a national. There is no nation called Pan Africa, unless you mean Brooklyn, New York!

Michael Jackson, rest his soul, told us to remember the time! Remember Nation Time? Remember when North American Africans were serious about establishing a sovereign nation here in the wilderness of North America? Remember the Nation of Islam, the Republic of New Africa. Were these idle dreams of romantic idealists with rose colored glasses?

But what is Pan Africanism but another dream, certainly more difficult to achieve than the first, especially for North American Africans who would enter the Pan African nation as stateless persons. How can you seriously represent yourself in a collection of nations while you are victims of the slave system called the United States of America.

You want to connect with other independent people while you exist in a dependent status, neo-colonial subjects of the US, persons who have never exercised self-determination and most certainly not sovereignty. You can't even conceive of such! You have no idea what freedom is!

Sun Ra taught if you don't do the right thing, the Creator got it fixed so you can't go forward or backward until you do so. Pan Africanism is an ideal, but the realization of the idea must be grounded on nationalism. Pan Africanism is the logical next step after nationalism. Think globally, but act locally, nationally.

Call me a narrow minded nationalist, I don't give a damn. I am not trying to win a popularity contest. I don't care if you ever invite me to speak at your gatherings. I am quite satisfied writing. In fact, I'm having the best time of my life. So I'm going to call it as I see it, since we won't be around forever, and who wants to be? As my elders made plain to me the other day, it doesn't get any better with time!

I just want to see some sanity in this matter of North American Africans in time and space. Too many of us want to nick pick and cherry pick freedom, a job, a woman, money, materialism, international relations. Yet how can you have international relations when you have no national relations. You can't go around the corner with two North American Africans, yet you want to be a Pan African. My parents taught me charity begins at home and spreads abroad.

When will we come out of space and land on solid ground? Dr. Nathan Hare calls it other-worldism. Some of us are ready to follow another Jim Jones to some jungle to drink poison Kool Aid. We want to claim allegiance to Africa, the Moon, Russia, China, anywhere but casting down our buckets where we are and seizing the time, the space, the land that we have every right to a fair share, yes, the human and divine right to own a piece of America, four or five states, where we can live in peace, free of the eternal hostile environment of the White Supremacy American slave system.

Yet we tarry in Jerusalem, standing on the corner with our dicks in our hand and hearts racing, thinking the whore is coming back. She ain't coming back, brothers, so stop being the trick. Our generation is on the way out, so what shall we leave our children. American politics is a grand delusion--Elijah told you no politican of this world can save you--yet you persist. Even I fell under the momentary illusion Obama could and would make a difference. If anything, the noose has gotten tighter under his watch. He's outdone Bush with wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere. He's promised terrorists education, employment and housing if they lay down their arms. Why can't he do the same for brothers and sisters in the hood? I am astounded at the cost of housing our children in juvenile halls, $200,000 per year. Hell, send them to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, so they can learn how to be big time criminals, so they can join the Wall Street blood suckers of the poor. My daddy told me, "Boy, if you gonna be something be the best!"

But no, North American Africans will vote en mass to re-elect Obama to four more years of black face white supremacy and we will be quite satisfied. North American Africans aided African liberation, but where is our nation, our piece of the pie. You want to sit at the table of Pan Africanism but you bring nothing. You represent no one except yourself. You have not organized a plebecite or vote of the people. You have not prepared your people for independence. Our thinkers and intellectuals are quite satisfied being tenured Negroes at white supremacy colleges and universities, yet claim they are Pan Africanists. The white man surely laughs at his Negroes.

He knows they are damn fools. Even my friend Dr. Cornel West was asked by an interviewer how he could talk all this radicalism within the halls of Princeton, a bastion of white supremacy mis-education.

It is no wonder Elijah had to pick a man like Malcolm X, from the grass roots. We will linger on in this nothingness and dread until a crop of brothers and sisters come to the front of the line who are well grounded in revolutionary nationalism and Pan Africanism, with the priority on nationalism. Pan Africansim is simply a matter of foreign affairs. Nation Time!

We will need to summon ineluctable energy to bring about the Nation of North American Africans. We will need to discard sloth, laziness, niggardliness and myopia. We will need to detox and recover from our full blown addiction to white supremacy, wage slavery, bleaching cream and Korean hair.

Stop worrying about interracialism. If a black sister wants to be with a white man, let her alone. She got to have white consciousness to desire a white man, so why worry about her. As Elijah said of the UN Undersecretary Ralph Bunche (the Negro who helped establish the nation of Isreal, while he was without a nation for his people), "Ralph Bunche is a Negro we don't need." So those black brothers with white women are black men with white hearts, so let them go in peace. We have enough brothers and sisters to form a nation. We have enough wealth, North American Africans are the 16th richest nation in the world, except we're victims of tricknology that has us addicted to conspicuous consumption or full blown materialism, the addiction to the white man's world of make believe. Jump out of the box, North American Africans. You can do it, just like Jack! Nation Time!

--Marvin X

6/6/11

Albertina Sisulu, Leader of Apartheid Fight, Transitions

Albertina Sisulu, Who Helped Lead Apartheid Fight, Dies at 92

By BARRY BEARAK
Published: June 5, 2011
New York Times
JOHANNESBURG — Albertina Sisulu, considered by many to be the mother of South Africa’s liberation struggle, a woman who was hounded and jailed by the apartheid government but who lived to see her children assume leadership roles in a democratic nation, died here on Thursday. She was 92.

Siphiwe Sibeko/Associated Press
Albertina Sisulu with Nelson Mandela in 2005.

Mrs. Sisulu’s passing extinguishes another light of a generation that fought one of the great moral battles of the 20th century. Since her death, virtually every one of this nation’s leaders have come to her home to offer condolences. Only Nelson Mandela has been conspicuously absent. He is increasingly frail, and members of the Sisulu family visited him instead.

A humble but forceful woman, Mrs. Sisulu was the widow of Walter Sisulu, one of Mr. Mandela’s earliest political mentors, who died in 2003. She kept her dignity through decades of government harassment. Mr. Sisulu was imprisoned for 26 years, and she herself was repeatedly jailed, held incommunicado and “banned,” a restriction limiting where she could go and how many people she could see.

“But try as they might, they could not break her spirit, they could not make her bitter, they could not defeat her love,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said in one of the many tributes offered after her death.

Nontsikelelo Thethiwe was born into a poor farming family in the Transkei, a former British protectorate that is now part of Eastern Cape Province. When she enrolled in a school run by missionaries, she was given a list of Christian names to chose from and selected Albertina.

Her father died when she was 11, and poverty might have kept her from finishing her education had she not won a scholarship to a Roman Catholic secondary school. After graduation, she accepted the advice of an admired priest and moved to Johannesburg to study nursing, a career that offered a small salary as she apprenticed.

In 1941, she was training at the Non-European General Hospital when she met Mr. Sisulu, a political activist with the African National Congress. Their courtship would be her political awakening. They married three years later. Nelson Mandela was best man at the ceremony.

In his autobiography, Mr. Mandela describes Albertina as a “wise and wonderful presence.” At the Sisulus’ wedding reception, he wrote, an A.N.C. stalwart warned the bride, “Albertina, you have married a married man: Walter married politics before he met you.”

She, in turn, was marrying the liberation movement. The Sisulus’ home in the Orlando area of Soweto became a central meeting place for the robust discussions that shaped the direction of the A.N.C. She combined her work as a visiting nurse with the distribution of political pamphlets.
On Aug. 9, 1956, Mrs. Sisulu was a leader of a historic march by 20,000 women against the nation’s pass laws, which restricted the movements of blacks. One slogan from the protest was, “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.” Aug. 9 is now celebrated in South Africa as Women’s Day.

Walter Sisulu would go on to head the A.N.C., and later, along with Mr. Mandela and others, create an armed wing of the organization. The Sisulus’ relationship has been celebrated in South Africa as a great love story, but during the first 20 years of their marriage, he was so often in jail or on the run that the couple barely spent 9 years together.

Once, in 1963, when the police failed to locate her husband, they seized Mrs. Sisulu instead, arresting her while she was treating patients. She was placed in solitary confinement under a notorious law that allowed detention for 90 days without charges.

“There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to occupy my mind—nothing except to think of what was happening to my children at home,” she recalled in a 2002 biography written by her daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu.

The couple had five children and raised three more who belonged to Mr. Sisulu’s deceased sister. Unknown to Mrs. Sisulu, after she was jailed, her 17-year-old son Max was arrested and held under the same law.

In 1964, Mr. Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment, serving most of his time, like Mr. Mandela, on Robben Island. Mrs. Sisulu was banned for 10 years. Her children either went into exile or entered boarding school.

As the decades passed, MaSisulu, as she was affectionately called, was frequently arrested, locked up for infractions as slight as attending the funeral of a friend. Her children faced similar harassment.

“I did not mind going to jail myself, and I had to learn to cope without Walter,” Mrs. Sisulu once said. “But when my children went to jail, I felt that the Boers were breaking me at the knees.”

Nevertheless, her political activities continued. In 1983, she became one of the founders of the United Democratic Front, a powerful antiapartheid coalition that brought together religious, labor and student groups.

In July 1989, she led a delegation on an overseas mission, arguing for sanctions against the apartheid government. She met with President George H. W. Bush and former President Jimmy Carter. She dined with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The days of racist oppression were drawing to a close. That October, Mr. Sisulu was set free; Mr. Mandela would be released four months later.

In 1994, with multiracial democracy finally having replaced white domination, Mrs. Sisulu was elected to Parliament. She served for four years, retiring from politics though remaining active in social causes.

The Sisulu family, for so long badgered and humiliated, is now a political dynasty. Her daughter Lindiwe Sisulu is the nation’s defense minister. Her son Max is speaker of the National Assembly. Another daughter, Beryl Sisulu, is South Africa’s ambassador to Norway. She is also survived by her son Zwelakhe Sisulu and daughter Nkuli Sisulu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 6, 2011


Because of an editing error, an earlier version misstated Mrs. Sisulu's relationship to three children she and her husband raised. They were the children of Mr. Sisulu's deceased sister, not Mrs. Sisulu's sister.

Jasper Texas Poem and Apology for Slavery Proclamation

TREK ON THE JASPER TRAIL

On June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas a Black man, James Byrd Jr. was severely beaten, chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his dismemberment and death. His head was severed after one mile while his torso was dragged for an additional two miles. Three crackers with links to the KKK and Aryan nation were held responsible. Dr. Daniel Kunene (Emeritus Prof. U.W. Madison) author of Heroic Poetry of the Basotho, Chaka (translation of the famous novel by Thomas Mofolo). Pirates Have Become Our Kings, From the Pit of Hell to the Spring of Life, The Zulu Novels of C.L.S. Nyembezi and The Rock at the Corner of My Heart wrote the following poem in memory of this horrific event.

Dr. Daniel Kunene, poet

In the first mile of the Jasper trail
the texas sun shines uncommonly bright
does not once blink
while the truck rattles on

in the cabin:
“do you still
go out with annie mcguire?”

“O ya! nice lass
nice ass”

In the second mile of the Jasper trail
the sun listens
a cow bellows
a rancher cracks his whip

behind the truck
HE sees sparks and a million stars
lighting up the endless firmament
MY GOD! MY GOD! WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME?
then
darkness

inside the cabin
annie mcguire has come alive
and a young man besmears his pants
at the mere thought of annie mcguire

In the third mile of the Jasper trail
the shooting stars have died into their ashes
and the shadows around the sun
have crowded together to cover its face
from the shame

inside the cabin:
“I wonder how the nigger is doing back there”

A crow caws
and instantly the air is choked with cawing crows
that have suddenly filled the sky
for midnight has descended on the Jasper trail
yet the young men in the truck fail to see
the eclipse
the chaos

they stop
they come out
“I feel sick Bob!”

“don’t be a squeam Ricky
aren’t you a Texan?”

“what’s a squeam Bob?
I’m going to throw up Bob!”

“ah, go puke you jellybelly
I’ll go empty my bladder over him”

Somewhere
a Spirit that escaped
in the moment of decapitation
at the last crossroad
cries
“Forgive them
for they know not what they do”

(c) 1999 by Daniel P. Kunene



Berkeley Juneteenth Slave Apology Proclamation

Supervisor Keith Carson and President Nate Miley are authors of a Slave Apology Proclamation,scheduled to be adopted on Tuesday, June 7, 2011, at approximately 10:45am at the regularlyscheduled Board of Supervisors meeting, at 1221 Oak Street, 5th floor, Oakland, CA.

The resolution recommends that the Board adopt a resolution apologizing for the enslavement andracial segregation of African Americans, and calls for economic reparations benefiting African Americans, in health, education and housing programs.

The proclamation acknowledges the brutality of slavery, described as “involuntary servitude,” and the resulting disparities it created. The “separate but equal” Jim Crow era was described as “the lingering after effect of slavery” which created enormous tangible and intangible damage and loss of dignity and liberty. The resolution also recommends that state and federal governments issue a similar formal policy and recommit to bringing an end to racial prejudices, disparities and injustices in our society, and says that in order to promote healing and reconciliation, the injustices need to be identified.

The resolution will be accepted by Delores Cooper Edwards, representing Berkeley Juneteenth Association, Inc. (BJAI), an organization who for the past 24 years has held Freedom Day celebrations which honor African American heritage and commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery.

Edwards says she initially had reservations about the resolution, saying: “How can this apology undo the impact slavery had on the entire fabric of America?” But says the apology should serve as “a reminder that the fight for freedom and equality is continuous.” Edwards say she will accept the apology not only for African American citizens, “but for all citizens of Alameda County, regardless of complexion, group, or language,” quoting President John Kennedy: “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”

BJAI will read the resolution in its entirety at its annual Juneteenth celebration scheduled for Sunday, June 26, 2011, 10am-6pm on Alcatraz @ Adeline, in the city of Berkeley. After the Festival, the resolution will be placed in the organization’s historical archives.

America, Stark Raving Mad

America, Stark Raving Mad

"It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad."
--James Baldwin, interview with Marvin X, 1968


We know murder can become an addiction, the murderer actually gets high killing. So imagine the psycho-pathological mentality of the American military killing around the world. Wars and proxy wars, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere, some places we know nothing about and shall never know, but the US killers are on the move, spreading mayhem across the globe, with over one hundred bases in nations with the primary motive of securing free market capitalism at the point of a gun, tanks, planes, drones, etc.

Again, once the killer starts it is hard to stop, to withdraw, to end the occupation.
America is due to exit Iraq this year but don't believe the hype. As we said months ago, the war in Iraq hasn't started. The US mass murder was only a dress rehearsal. If and when the US retreats, the Sunnis and Shia will engage in a battle with regional implications. The Saudis have been deeply involved it insuring the continuation of the Sunni insurgency. The Saudis lead the pack of Sunnis who have every intention of never allowing a functioning Shia government, after all, they are considered heretics of the first order, additionally, they are considered puppets of Iran, another Shia nation with mythological goals of expansion from the Tigress and Euphrates to the Mediterranean.

Of course don't leave out Israel in this equation. She has united with the Saudis to block Shia expansion. Israel is already hemmed in on one side by Shia supported Hamas in Gaza and Iranian proxi Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And so we should expect the war in Iraq to continue, perhaps in a low intensity manner, but war none the less. And war is hell, the blood, breaking of bones, wailing of women, the raping and torture. Trillions of dollars gone down the drain so retired Generals in the US can make a few billion as CEOs of defense related corporations.

Of course war is only politics by other means, thus the real insanity is in the political structure, an entity totally under the control of special interest groups or lobbyists who care nothing about people, only fees from those they advocate. They are so sick with it, they will advocate for dog catchers, men with boys, or any project for profit. And so we have the insanity of the best democracy money can buy.

Our President is securely in the hands of Wall Street. He is their mascot, a man of supposed intelligence, but more in line with the great capitulators in history. He accepted insults from Zionist Netanyahu that hurt to watch. How could a real black man allow a white man to insult him in the White House before the entire world. He must be a sick puppy. The most powerful man in the world is a wimp.

I asked a friend of mine with contacts at the White House, who is Obama? My friend is 73 years old. He replied, "You don't want to know the answer to that question. If I tell you, you won't live to be 73!"

The mental health of America is deteriorating at a rapid pace. The babies talk of killing, the youth are killing. Babies two years old must be removed from child care centers due to sexual assault. Five year old girls are banned from child care because of lesbian sexual activity. Apparently, the sexual identity crisis is full blown. Boys who aren't gay, sound gay. A young man said, "My friends sound gay because they have never heard a man's voice."

The sexual identity crisis is only part of the general mental breakdown. We have a society with more than 14 million people unemployed and there isn't a job program under discussion by the Government. We assume the unemployed are expendable in the global free market capitalist order. The capitalist say, "We have a bountiful field of workers in China and India. To Hell with high priced American workers." Yes, the capitalist swine will kill their mothers for a profit. The profit motive has driven America, in the words of Baldwin, "...to rationalizations so fantastic it approaches the pathological...."
--Marvin X

Suheir Hammad

“INTO EGYPT” BY SUHEIR HAMMAD // 02.03.11
BYFEN


tunisians started it. egyptians followed. palestinian-american suheir hammad wrote to it. we have to remind one another that art endures. we hope you find light in suheir’s words:

into egypt

to be ready
you will want beauty
as your face
you will want to greet the day with a heart
you will wish was open
you will want to be brave
and you only fear
want belief in anything
and everything is doubt
when there is light finally you might squint
the sight of it all might make you

steady you will want
a vision ahead
redemptive dissonance
music for the end of
chorus for the coming of
manifest hum into hymn
the noise of it rivers you
you will cry water into flames
vulture your own heart to feed

you will want to love your self
at all enough you will want
to flee and forget the leaving
will have to leap still wanting
you will want to wait for witness
you will want to wait for those already gone
you will want until you are want
you will want until
you are ready

>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2011/02/03/into-egypt-suheir-hammad/



__________________________



6QS WITH POET SUHEIR HAMMAD // 11.22.09


BYMARWA


Suheir Hammad needs no introduction. You’ve seen her bust a verse on Russel Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, moving a nation with her post-9/11 poem, “First Writing Since.” And she recently starred in the groundbreaking film Salt of This Sea. But more than that, her poems aren’t merely read or heard–as one reader at a recent reading of her new work breaking poems put it, they are ones we “bear witness to.” FEN had the honor of getting these six questions in with her afterwards:


STATS:
ice cream: Tropical sorbet
song lyric: “As” by Stevie Wonder
superhero: The Universe

1. Did you get support or resistance from your family when you started your career?
There wasn’t resistance from just my family and there’s wasn’t support from just one place. As a woman, the life-choice to be an artist, isn’t nurtured in any of the communities I engage with. And that’s where artists have to push their voice, through the resistance.

I COMMITTED MYSELF TO MY CRAFT. AND IN A WAY, THE CHOICE WAS MADE FOR ME.

There was a tipping or turning point where I looked forward, and back, and decided I would work to be more honest and a better poet. That’s what poetry is. It’s about the human endeavor.

2. What are your influences and motivators?
Curiosity. There’s a specific kind of dysfunction in it. It has the ability to carry you to one place while it gets you stuck in some other places.

3. What’s missing from the Arab-American art scene in your mind?
I wouldn’t say there is a scene. We have disparate aesthetics, influences and ideas. And it seems like we’re all dealing with the same themes from different angles.

EVERY ARTIST NEEDS TO FIGURE OUT THEIR IDENTITY AND WHAT THEIR AESTHETIC IS.

My father raised me as a Palestinian in America not Arab-American. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I saw myself as Arab-American. So we need to rethink how language invites or excludes members of a community.

4. Tell us about making the transition from performing spoken word to acting.
I never wanted to act–never had that hunger to be on stage. It never fed me artistically or spiritually. But for something that I never wanted to do, I learned so much. And art is a self-study, and you have to continue to redefine yourself.

5. What obstacles have you run into and how have you overcome them?
There’s a tension between my personal definition and the inspiration for why I do what I do, and what the external world tells you to do. Along the way, you grow up. You figure out what you want to do. There’s always going to be that mystery. And that’s when I go back to the page. Poetry is there for me to work these things out–in craft and theme.

6. What’s your advice for aspiring artists?
Be the best artist you can be.

YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU’RE CREATING AND BE THE BEST CREATOR THAT YOU CAN.

There’s nothing more important than your commitment to your craft. And everyone has a different road to being the best artist they can be.





>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2009/11/22/six-questions-with-suheir-hammad/





__________________________



VIDEO: SUHEIR HAMMAD: POEMS OF WAR, PEACE, WOMEN, POWER // 02.09.11
BYFEN



In the same way that we can count on Egyptians to stay in Midan Tahrir night after night, we can count on Suheir Hammad to deliver. Again and again. Press play and know that what you hear is true.

>via: http://www.fenmag.com/2011/02/09/video-suheir-hammad-poems-of-war-peace-women...
via vimeo.com

Poems from a student to Marvin X

June 2011, & X @ 67
Posted on June 4, 2011 by anzinga







June 2011

Superman went home

followed by Geronimo Pratt

Tears and struggle

from Harlem to Tanzania

Souls set free from heavy bodies

X’s wisdom brightens the midnight sky

in Babylon as

we remember Sun Ra

in the laughter of the living

Lupe proves it ain’t all a fiasco

Gil Scott and Plato’s Cave

revolutionary lessons

never televised

but still in syndication

Students remember teachers



X @ 67 Baba turned 67

his children forgave him

he may eventually forgive himself

but bless the demons that chase him

keep him pouring out

look may he flow forth

we were born &

will no doubt die

thirsty

keep him pouring out

long may he flow forth

keep him pouring out

bless his mama

living brightly in his memory

may she forgive him for

ignoring her at least this once

we worthless negroes are blessed

because

he has never left us alone

in his journey from miscreant to itinerant poet

he grew towards Mt. Thai & he wrote maps

so we could follow as he turned away from feathers

remembered how to talk to cows

learned from falling down

the value of things he never owned

sharpening his pen to sword point

bargained his soul back from the devil

for poems in the name of his grandchildren

as his students watched

they learned to plant seeds

we know you were here

you have carved on souls

in a forest that plants trees as it burns

in life’s fire all is clean

all is new again

Sun Ra never died he ascended

as you have

standing there in the light

sun over your left shoulder

forever in your righted eyes

bless us as

we present flowers to the living

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

Understanding White Supremacy in the Present Era

Forget that post-black, post racism poppycock. Forget the first black president mirage, the illusion that imperialism and raw, naked capitalism cannot have a black face, kinder, gentler, yet the same motherfuckin bullshit from yesterday, just covered over with a light black face, one acceptable to the white masters and deceptible to the black masses, so gullible emotionally they will go for fried ice cream and purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge in one sale.

Thank God Master Fard Muhammad was able to trick us out of tricknology by entering our homes selling red silk cloth, yes, that same red in the flag that was used to march us through the jungle of Africa to the shores where we passed through the door of no return and boarded the Good Ship Jesus to the hell hole called America.

We must fully understanding that White Supremacy is cunning and vile, a drug so subtle that the entire world has become under its addiction. And yet it is a full blown illusion, yet so intractable

that it ensnares men, women and children of every ethnic group around the planet. Call it cultural imperialism, the dissemination of values that brainwash entire nations that become mental if not physical slaves of the dominate culture.

But it is in the superstructure, the laws and mores of White Supremacy, i.e. lunacy, that the victims become so utterly entrapped that we cannot imagine there are at least two laws operating in the White Supremacy slave system: one for the masters and one for the slaves.

Our poor ghetto brothers and sisters would never fully understand there are two laws or the application of said laws, depending on whether one lives in the hood or in the suburbs. In the hood there are numerous check point charlies where one is stopped regularly for any infraction. In the police state of New York City, blacks are stopped at the whim of "community police" and randomly checked for drugs, guns, probation or parole violations.

Now we have lived in the suburbs so we know the difference. We lived in a town called Castro Valley for a time at the pleasure of my patron, a rich black brother who had a son out of control at the loss of his mother due to cancer. The youth had a car with no license, no insurance, no tags, but was stopped speeding on several occasions. He was not arrested, ticketed or did he have his car taken. The police simply called his father and told him to come get his son, and the boy went home.

As I was the only adult at the house, virtually a mansion in this exclusive area, the youth had a party, but when neighbors called the police, they arrived but only wanted to know if an adult was in the house. When they saw me, they said thank you and good night, even though the youth were indeed doing drugs and drinking alcohol. The officers said, Good night, sir!

In employment, we have black people going totally insane due to discrimination on the job, especially when they are doubly qualified but are passed over continuously for advancement.

Even in education our children are told they cannot learn, thus they drop out or are pushed out because after being dumbed down, they lower the test scores and the resultant funding of the school district. Yet, we have the recent case of a young man in a dental assistant program who repeatedly received the highest test scores but was repeatedly overlooked when cash prizes were given out for the highest test score. This is the type of blatant discrimination we must endure of a daily basis in this so called Obamian Post-Black/racism era.

During my imprisonment for refusing to fight in Vietnam, I had a job in the yard office of looking up prisoners when they had a visit, so I had access to their files containing their offence and sentencing. I saw that a black bank robber got seven years on the average and a white bank robber three years. Need I say more? If you don't get it you ain't gonna get it, so why persist and prolong this conversation.

Sometimes it doesn't matter where we live, the result can be the same if we are black, witness the treatment given Harvard Professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates when he failed the tone test. In the hood the tone test is when encountering the police, depending on one's tone of voice, one can be arrested, released or killed. Imagine the innumerable blacks who failed the test. And black parents are guilty of not teaching their children, especially their sons, the tone test.

But alas, the tone test transcends the police, when encountering another black, we must exercise caution with our tone of voice, otherwise we may suffer the same fate as with the police. Depending on your tone of voice, another black may want to take you out, but ironically, no matter how disrespectful a white man may be, he ain't thinking about taking out no white man.

This is a case of what Dr. Nathan Hare calls Type II White Supremacy, the self hate variety, the misplaced aggression type. Another example of this behavior is when the community becomes enraged when the police kill us but when us kill us there is no similar response, no rallies, no march, no protest, only silent night.

The prescription is for us to recover from Type II White Supremacy, the self hate variety, so that we can have power over Type I, or rather, it shall have no power over us, once we detox and recover from Type II. See my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, A Pan African Twelve Step Model, Black Bird Press, 2007. The entire book is available to download for free: http://www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com/