My Favorite Martian

I chose this blog title because the GOP’s new character must be from another planet. Let me explain. There was a powerful line in the phenomenal novel “The Mis-educantion of the Negro”. Where the profound Dr. Carter G. Woodson said, “If you control what a man is thinking, you never have to worry about what he thinks”. It seems like every decade has produced some unconscious Negro steps forward into the national spotlight to demonstrate how insane they can sound in trying to attract the support or affinity of white folk by making the most outrageous and outlandish statement. We’ve had Steele, Connerly, Keys, and Thomas to name a few. After watching Republican field of candidates, Pizza Man, Herman Cain takes the cake and the conservatives love him.

Let me be clear, I am for anyone who is successful and trying to do positive things but this guy! This is the first time in a long while that I am assumed for him. He recently said that during the wretched segregation period he would go to the back of the bus rather than cause trouble. I was never more shocked in all my life. My issue with him is that he disrespects our president, yet calls himself and American. Frankly, he has no more chance of being the Republican nominee for president for the GOP than I do.

There is nothing that distinguishes him from the rest of the republican candidates other that their rage for Obama. Cain has had a couple of victories and that has caused him to lose his mind. This week, Herman Cain made the comments that “Racism in this country today doesn’t hold anybody back in a big way.” He acknowledges there are some racist elements in the society but suggests that the so-called level “playing field” is only screwed during weak economies. He can’t be that unconscious.

With that statement, he just earned my nomination for the most insane Negro on the planet. Only a fool would believe that the vestiges of racial discrimination are not only present in today’s society, but some of the disparities they created are worse than they were nearly 60 years ago. Just because a few more are doing better doesn’t it does not exist. That’s why the black bourgeois who escape the realities of black misery have never been able to speak for the masses. It this false intellectualism or insane and I chose insane.

National columnist Anthony Asadullah Samad, Ph.D. wrote a great column where he sai: “Well to do blacks like former BET owner, Bob Johnson, and Godfather Pizza giant, Herman Cain, distort and misrepresent the racial complexities of American culture today. To dismiss the reality of racism, after knowing the sting of racism — just because you got a break—to win an election or carry favor with a white electorate, suggests you have no conscience about who you step on to get to where you want to get to. Cain is a Morehouse Graduate, who came up in the Civil Rights Era South, but somewhere along the way — someone stole the soul.”

Samad, also said in this article, “It has nothing to do with holding them back, and everything to do with leaving them behind. Blacks are expected to “pull themselves up” without a rope, and America won’t throw us one. Even though they throw themselves one every day. Economic stimuli and corporate bailouts, are ropes thrown to the wealthy to pull themselves up.

Twenty years ago, blacks were told, “pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps”…even if you didn’t have boots. Another Negro spewed the same line as Cain suggesting there was no such thing as racism. His name was Ward Connerly and he was the face of the anti-Affirmative Action movement in America. It led to the elimination of affirmative action in many states. We have witnessed, firsthand, what the absence of conscious can do. It can make you lose your mind, forget the truth and steal the integrity of a true movement.”

Twenty years ago this week, America sought to confirm the most unconscious black man in America history, Clarence Thomas, when a sister of conscious, Anita Hill, stood up and suggested that Thomas was not fit of mind to serve on the Supreme Court. We have not only found out that he wasn’t fit of mind but he is out of his mind and is absolutely soul-less when it comes the racial experience that positioned him to be where he is. Clarence Thomas is the “Who Stole The Soul” poster boy for where you can land if you’re willing to say and do anything, including put down your own people.

Malcolm X once said, “I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” That’s what people like Thomas, Connerly, Bob Johnson and Herman Cain do. They dismiss what America has done to the masses of black people, then criticize black people for not being able to stand up to the weight of centuries of racial oppression—just because they escaped it. Then they make excuses for why conditions remain the same.

They say things like what Cain said, “If you’re poor, don’t blame America. Blame yourself.” Really? Even if you believe that, saying it is a false assertion that exploits racial circumstances more than it helps because those who want to believe it, use it as an excuse to do nothing to change the racial disparities we all know are real in this country.

It’s unconscionable that black folks lose their minds like this, but obviously it happens when someone or something steals your cultural conscience, what we call, soul. Other people fake the conscience and steal the soul, just to remain relevant with black people when they need to be. There is a modern day Niggerati in our midst. We see it and allow it to move about us, but we need to be clear about the compromise it represents because its not about us—its about them and only them. One who steals the soul from his community is no better than the one who loses his soul, forsaking his community for another. Both have lost their conscious minds and will say or do anything to promote themselves.

Speaking of losing your mind, the Taste of Soul festival is in Los Angeles this weekend. The Taste of Soul was created by radio executive, Ron Turner, who was the National Sales for KKBT. “The Beat” was planning a street fair in the late 1990s before they sold the station to Cathy Hughes. The name of the concept…”Taste of Soul.” Turner met with several community folk, including myself, to start the street fair under the new management but Cathy Hughes sold her station before the fair could be implemented. Someone else has implemented it, but they didn’t create it. Didn’t even change the name. I hope my baby brother, Ron Turner, strolls down the boulevard this weekend to take in his creation. But it says something for someone who won’t acknowledge when they get their “ideas” from others and refuse to give credit to them.

Do I believe racism still exists: Yes! Is it as overt as the Citizens Counsels of old, hmmm, but it certainly is in evidence by omission, as blacks are disproportionately left out of social and economic mainstream. My Granddaddy use to tell me and I will share this with the man whose name should be removed from the minds of mankind. “You can be on top of the world today and tomorrow the world will be on top of you. So be careful what you wish for because you may have to come back to us and guess what we don’t want you.

And that’s my THOUGHT PROVOKING PERSPECTIVES…

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