Just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine. - Dick Gregory

And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: Romans 5: 2-4

The word said we glory in tribulation; you read words like that when you’re at your deepest bottom and you think to yourself, God is bugging. Alright maybe you’ve never had those thoughts but I have. Yet it was me who was bugging because the word also says that tribulation builds our patience. Through tribulations that we are patient enough to endure we are blessed with experience and through experience our Lord has blessed us with the ability to hope. Hope, you see the experience whether it was good or bad gives rise to a different way. That’s our hope, when we stop hoping for a better way, for a better tomorrow, it is then that our spirit is dying.

I can only speak for myself but when I allow an experience to strip me of my hope I become void inside and that to me feels like a spiritual death. So I don’t quite know if I glory in tribulation, glory might not be the first term that comes to mind. However, I see the good in hardship because it is my hardships that have made me a better man. It will be my continued endurance through this game called life, these experiences, that will allow me to hope for a better day. And when that better day comes hold it up as a testament to the Lord’s work. Moreover to even get to that hope, to get through life’s experiences we must be patient. I am one of the most impatient brothers you have ever met. My mother says I want everything on my time; she’s probably right, I mean I got things to do, lol. However I am slowly but surely learning, often the hard way that my time does not matter. God has a plan and I am more of a servant to his time. So all we can do is live, and through living we will acquire experience whether it be good or bad, it is these experiences that will build an unyielding faith in our spirits and allow us to hope for our greatest good. Peace and Grace be unto you.

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Hmm after watching this can we really continue to place all of the blame on Hip-Hop and rappers for the misogynist messages that our children have access too. Things that make you go hmmm!!!!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O51l7S7Sx3g&hl=en]

Photo courtesy of New York Times

Wear all black on Monday for the injustice verdict in the Sean Bell case Please pass this on to anyone who can receive a text.

I received this text message numerous times throughout the course of the weekend and again I ask “Is wearing all black the new activism”. Has wearing all black taken the place of such notable activism as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I remember back when the Jena 6 movement was thriving and we were all wearing black as a means to show the masses our “black solidarity”. I participated and heard many say that they felt good walking into their corporate offices and seeing other people of color representing the injustice that was being served in Jena. But does our action stop there, does what we wear really signify that an injustice has been done?

So today I woke up and threw on my black shirt and my black Chuck Taylor sneakers in memory of the brother Sean Bell. I walked into my classroom and unlike that glorious Jena day, barely any people of color were wearing all black. What does wearing all black mean anyway; do the people who we want to see our solidarity even know that we are wearing this color to represent the fact that a brother was murdered by the NYPD. That yet again the NYPD walked out of a court of law not guilty of all charges. My own Constitutional Law professor had no idea who Sean Bell was and that this verdict had drastically affected the lives of many people. He was unaware that many young brothers and sisters had taken to the streets and were seeking Justice for the loss of yet another young talented black man. He definitely had no idea why one of his students had on black today; all he wanted to know was if I was familiar with the material that will be on his exam next week.

I checked through my usual news media outlets hoping that I would see something in the headlines about the injustice the Bell family was served this past Friday. Instead, I was inundated with news of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Democrat Primary’s, but there was no sign of any measures that would be taken towards the Bell family finding JUSTICE. And why should their be, a brother is dead and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives. More concerned with celebrity gossip than the fact that black men can be killed in this country and their murderers receive absolutely no punishment.

The NY Times had a brief article about this issue however, and it largely dealt with the few people who were outraged by the verdict and were protesting in Harlem yesterday. One of the brothers on the bull horn asked “why aren’t more people out here”. The days of marching and blocking traffic for a day or two didn’t work then and they will continue not to work now. All the police do is re-direct the traffic and the protest becomes more of a nuisance than a movement that affects change. So what my generation has come up with as a means of fighting injustice is wearing all black; then we are really fighting institutionalized racism and brutality, we’ll show em!

Wrong, we need a strategic effort on a variety of fronts to fight the injustices that are facing our people. I refuse to believe that we are as lazy as the Civil Rights Guard of Leadership paints us. No we are not lazy at all, we are the internet generation; the text message generation. All of that to say we have the fastest and often most effective modes of communication to get messages across to our peers and move in a organized manner. We have to fight these different injustices on many different fronts. The Judge who rendered the verdict; we have to find out if he was elected or appointed; if elected we make sure that those who are eligible to vote in that district show up in record numbers to relieve him of his position.

Let’s take it back to the boycott days since the loss of revenue is the only thing that makes politicians and businessmen understand that we are angry about something and are seeking some type of remedy. This shouldn’t be hard to do because we are spawning into a recession anyway and people are already strapped for cash. We need to find out exactly what businesses that if we stopped patronizing would affect Michael Bloomberg the fastest. Once those major businesses are affected they will call up their high powered friends ad say “hey we have to do something about this’ its affecting my pocket”! You see when when we start to use our creativity and organize our efforts we begin to fall upon the ears who really create change in our cities. Maybe then the NYPD will stop believing that it is perfectly fine and legal to kill young black men. But if all we are doing is wearing black; trust me the courts, the politicians, the police and definitely the law are not hearing our voices.

We need to tap into the resources in our communities who have the know how and ability to propose legislation for stricter monitoring practices over the police departments who brutalize communities of color. All cops are not the scum who murder and harass people of color so we need to reach out to those who are fed up with their colleagues behavior and off the record find out what we can do to upset their internal situation that will help us make the changes we wish to see. I could write on for days about different measures that we could take however my one voice will not create this change. Our collective voice will not change these scenarios but our collective voices coupled with our strategic collective actions will create this change. In memory of Sean Bell and all of the other forgotten fallen soldiers; please let’s Make It Happen!

ps. I will be at the Black and Male In America Conference the weekend of June 15 - 17 in Brooklyn, NY. I think we all need to be there!

I use this song because Sean Bell and I were both in junior high school when this song came out. We both watched this video on BET’s Rap City! Now he’s gone and I’m here and no justice has been served in his honor (not violence) but Justice. Who are the real SHOOK ONES?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeuEGr_UTzg&hl=en]

Let’s trace the birth of an idea. It’s born as rampant radicalism, then it becomes progressivism, then liberalism, then it becomes moderated conservative, outmoded, and gone. - Adam Clayton Powell

You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.
Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal. Isaiah 26: 3-4

I remember being in junior high school and hearing Prodigy of Mobb Deep rap “there’s a war going on outside no man is safe from, you can run but you cant hide forever, from these streets that we done took, you walking wit ya head down scared to look, ya shook!” While I lay in bed this morning, refusing to get up I thought the same lyrics only I said there’s a war going on inside, inside ourselves, our own personal demons. We really can’t run from them even though we attempt to by suppressing our feelings and acting as if things aren’t truly bothering us. Prodigy rapped about the streets that he and his cohorts took; the demons that exist within us, the skeletons in our closet they take over the streets of our lives. Our minds, our hearts; they produce doubt and and low self esteem causing even more pain and strife in our lives.

So what do you do? Well we can keep running until the day it all catches up with us and we’re to fatigued to even fight back. Or we could trust in the Lord; but really trust in the Lord. I mean you can go to church and hear beautiful gospel songs, a mighty word that makes you jump and shout and go home and still feel empty. Trusting in the Lord starts with trusting in yourself and trusting that he made you the way you are supposed to be. Trust that the experiences that he takes you through, he is taking you through because you can handle them and he has a great reward for you when you pass his test with flying colors. I know I’ve been stressed out; went to church, felt good there, came home and was stressed out. Three weeks later, still stressed out until we really hear the words in today’s passage. Trust in the Lord forever for he is our ROCK. Trust in yourself because the Lord breathes within you and face the war going on inside because with his grace you are safe from it and you will prevail. Peace and Grace be unto you.

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

Someone please tell me how with this country having a struggling economy, thousands of troops dying in an unjust war, and a recent verdict in NY that allows the police to legally kill young black males where these journalists get there moronic questions from?

Please tell me, where are the real journalists?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEJ2ZLkjqQI&hl=en]

Still, you have to appreciate the amount of swag that he answered that question with. YES WE CAN!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6EsuXCpp6Q&hl=en]