The Curse Of Willie Lynch

Some have proclaimed that a slave was born. I disagree with this notion because a slave was made by means of a defined calculated and well thought-out plan devised for the purpose of being a beast of burden. We know the reasons for this atrocity which was to build a nation and to obtain wealth for the culprits. But what is not understood, en mass, is how it was designed to be sustainable. That part has become little more than a footnote to history.

I’m reminded of the powerful words of Harriet Tubman who expressed succinctly the effectiveness of this system of mental conditioning. She was asked shortly before her death, if she knew how many slaves she freed while conducting the Underground Railroad. She did not think about it, replying quickly, “I could have freed a lot more, if they had only known they were slaves.”

From that day in dreadful in 1619 when the first Africans were dragged onto the shores of Jamestown until today where we’ve witnessed the first man of color elected President of these United States (or as Jesse would put it – from the outhouse to the White House), there is no doubt that our story is the greatest story ever told. As it is said in scripture, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” But let’s understand that there was a plan, a sinister plan, conceived at some point to ensure that people of African descent remains the least of thee.

Here is the look at the plan; as the story goes, a British slave owner from the West Indies was invited to Virginia sometime during the year 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners. Willie Lynch was the name of the man credited with a speech delivered on the banks of the James River. It is noteworthy to mention that the James River was named for the diabolical King of England, who was ironically, the same guy responsible for the twenty-eighth version of the cherished Holy Bible.

Lynch brought with him, as he put it, a foolproof method for controlling black slaves that will last for a thousand years. Consequently, it is believed the term “lynching” was derived from his last name as a way to pay homage to him for delivering this ingenious approach. The name Willie Lynch is interesting because it may be a simple play on words. For example, Will Lynch or Will he Lynch. Whatever the reason, it no doubt had significant psychological implications that played heavily on a naive race of people.

Lynch began his historic presentation with a warm greeting: “Gentlemen, you know what your problems are; I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems. I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I have a foolproof method for controlling your black slaves. I guarantee every one of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least three hundred years. My method is simple…The black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self refueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands….” The seeds of devastation were fertilized and the process of destruction was underway for the making of a race into slaves.

In the speech, Lynch outlined a number of differences among the slaves. He stressed to his audience that they should take these differences and make them bigger. These differences included such things as age, color, intelligence, fine hair vs. coarse hair, tall vs. short, male vs. female. These tactics were not new; however they were more than likely put together collectively for this specific purpose for the first time as keys to control.

This short eight paragraph speech was profound in that it was the embodiment of the cruelest demoralizing agenda ever imposed upon a people since the days when the Romans crucified our Lord. As Lynch closed his speech that day, he said, “They must love, respect, and trust only us.” This is the key to producing a successful strategy. Whether this story is true or not is cause for much speculation. However, as history demonstrates, a manufactured plan was developed by someone to achieve these results that continue to this day.

The Willie Lynch letter first appeared in the early 1970s gaining widespread notice during the nineties, when it began appearing on the Internet. Since then, it has often been promoted as an authentic account of slavery during the 18th century, but its inaccuracies and anachronisms have led historians to conclude that it is a hoax. Let’s be honest, I don’t think any reasonable person would think that those persons present, if there was a meeting, took written notes. However, the same reasonable thinking person can see that there was a designed plan created by someone in order to sustain such division. It may have been something as simple as “divide and conquer.”

So let’s suppose the Willie Lynch story is a modern creation; either the concept was ingenious or the biggest urban myth ever. Then it begs the question, why are we still fighting amongst ourselves. Further, how can the ruling people, or anyone for that matter, justify a philosophy for building and maintaining a government which sanctioned murder, among other atrocities, to enslave human beings?  I know, and mind you, I was not taught this in school nor did anyone explain that the government, through legislative sessions, passed laws to ensure that our bondage was sustained.

This wicked system was sanctioned by the church in the name of God. Therefore, it is important to understand, when the church endorsed slavery and the vehicle that drove it, this meant in the eyes of the system that God himself authorized this immoral agenda. If this was the mentality of the church, and it is a historical fact that religion sanctioned and justified enslaving people for centuries. It begs the question, does that mentality still exist?

And that is my Thought Provoking Perspective!

"Just a Season"

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AMAZON

Legacy – A New Season 

What Happened to the BLACK FAMILY?

In a past life, one of many that I have enjoyed, I taught a college course called the Psychology of the Black Family. From time to time I go back and look through some of those old term papers from that class. There was one assignment given to each student to write a term paper on “The Breakdown of the African American Family”.

As I read through some of the thirty or so papers I found several very significant points and a common theme throughout the papers. I decided to capture some of the key points from those research papers to share with you. My intent is to, maybe, create some dialog within our consciousness as to why the black family, our community, and black people are the least likely to work together as a solid unit to the benefit of each other as other ethnic groups do.

During slavery, and from the 1800's through the 1980's, the concept of family was tight knit, strongly woven, and the envy of most cultures. The African American family unit survived in spite of unimaginable cruelty and adversity. It is only recently, during the last thirty years or so that the African American family became dysfunctional and lost its direction. One has to think for some twisted reason we do not feel whole because in many cases we allow others define us.

I can recall a powerful statement made by one of the students who expressed that she thinks the different social pressures on black men and women have contributed to the weak traditional family structure. Black women have been able to achieve more economic and educational success than black men, leading to them being higher wage earners. This inequality has eroded black women's reliance on men and their willingness to compromise on their needs or expectations, which in turn has led to resentment and disappointment on both sides.

Black women raise children, too often alone, and the bitterness that difficult task creates causes some women to make derogatory complaints against men in general, tainting their daughters and shaming their sons. Also, it seems that black women do not often hold their sons to as high a standard as their daughters, making them further vulnerable.

If proper behavior is not modeled for young people, they have difficulty fulfilling those expectations. This creates the perfect ingredients for the dismal situations to occur in our community. She went on to say that a lot of that has to do with our values, and the lack of knowing the importance of loving our communities, our families, and ourselves.

These are 12 key factors expressed from my student’s outstanding research papers:

1. The Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of strong, intelligent, hardworking black men were shipped abroad to be murdered, returned home shell shocked, severely damaged, or addicted. Many of which were unable to get back on track after returning from war because the government abandoned them.

2. COINTELPRO: The covert actions of J. Edgar Hoover in the wake of the Civil Rights Era and the Black Power Movements all but insured that anyone speaking out against the governments wrong doings would receive either long prison sentences or bullets. This fear silenced our forward progression, fueling distrust, and removing many of our leaders as well as potential future leaders.

3. The Assassinations of the 1960’s: Left a huge void in leadership that has yet to be filled, particularly within the Civil Rights Movement to include within the community. Instead, a universal acceptance of the pimp/hustler image in popular culture that presented alternative heroes to black youth, which resonant in the form of Gangster Rap. This genre leads to the glorification of the criminal element amidst immature minds that lack familial structure. In addition to black on black crime and staying silent while black youth are murdered by other black youth.

4. The Feminist Movement: Backed by liberal white women to fight for the equal rights of women; the same rights most black men had yet to fully be granted. A lot of black women got lost in the rhetoric of how men were keeping them down, losing sight of the fact that black men were down there with them. To this day, the power exchange and infighting among black men and women, is sadly considered the norm, a tool enumerated by Willie Lynch.

5. Oliver North & the Contras: The volume of drugs, mainly crack cocaine that flooded the black community during the 80 to which most of the drugs came in on U.S. ships with the support of the Government. The CRACK era escalated death and incarceration rates, unwanted pregnancies, neighborhood prostitution and a culture of violence. Folks were selling their kids to hit the pipe, and selling their souls to sell what went in that pipe. This epidemic destroyed our community in ways slavery could never have done. This form of contemporary was the cruelest type of slavery imposed upon our communities.

6. Mass media brainwashing & mind control: The influences of propaganda and distorted images of beauty and male/female roles. Shows like Life Styles of the Rich and Famous, Dynasty, Different Strokes, and the Jefferson’s for example. The American conscious during the 80's was money driven. Materialism became the idea that stuff defines you and others.

7. Education: The lack of proper education, financing support, and knowledge being taught by African American professionals. In addition our leaders and academics failed us as they fled the hood in droves for the suburbs during those crazy 80's. Prior to this period, kids saw on a daily basis married couples that looked like them, even if they didn’t live in their households. Yet the great migration to greener pastures left a void in the community leaving it to be filled by the image of the hustler-pimp-thug, ruthlessness, and violence.

8. Communication: This speaks to education of self and listening to the wrong messengers. The communication of values - parents became unavailable to hand down family legacies, traditions and value systems. We're like POW's locked in the same building for 20 years, unable to converse through cement walls confined by our personas, egos, insecurities, isms etc.

9. The Black Church: Many churches have lost their way. The business of religion is bankrupting our communities. Many churches are not touching the lives of those outside of the church most in need. Just like back in the day when it was the design of slave masters, who did so much wickedness to use this as a tactic by offering a bible and in most instances nothing more than pain and a promise of a better life to keep us in line. This is not the same as faith which was necessary to survive our struggles. 

10. Urbanization - work and home were once connected. Parents were near their families and children understood work as a way of life. Urbanization helped create “latch key" kids and images of hard work disappeared while replacing it with material objects.

11. Social Services: The advent of the system of welfare that demanded the absence of the influence of the black man in the home. Before Claudine during the early 50's welfare was a Midwestern farmer hook up and back then you HAD to be a complete family to apply. So the laws for welfare changed in the inner-city while many in the farm lands of Mid America started to change in culture to fit the application for welfare. For decades to follow, trillions of dollars in government spending on ineffective social programs in our cities have not by enlarge benefited the mobility of the family.

12. Segregation: Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes that prevented legal marriages, dehumanized people, and discriminatory practices in work/education left many African Americans unable to access resources necessary to build strong family bases causing disillusioned men/husbands/fathers to abandonment rather than face daily reminder of their "failure".

The next time you look in the mirror think about want happened. And that’s my THOUGHT PROVOKING PERSPECTIVE!

http:johntwills.com

The King of Kings

For two-thousand years the story of a life and death has altered the world’s perception of life and death. The story of a Jewish carpenter from an ancient city, betrayed by a friend, and executed by the state for being the King of Kings. The man, Jesus the Christ, whose story is the most compelling and well-known story ever told. In fact, it has come to be known as the “Greatest Story Ever Told” by so many and not one word written by the man himself.

My questions for the faithful; How is it that you can or claim to love God who you cannot see, yet you cannot love the man who you can see and not transfer the teachings of Christ to the living human being? Why are so many wars fought in the name of God, when it is surely not his design to kill, maim, and visit devastation upon the souls of man?

It is said, “We walk by faith, not by sight” and that “faith is believing true that which is unseen”. We believe in spite of the many versions rewritten by conquers and false images created to depict the Holy deity as a white European man painted by Michael Angelo. When history tells us there was no word GOD in any African language before the coming of Europeans!

I will tell you that there were only two peoples living in that region of the world during the time of Christ. One would have been Roman and the other would have been African in a place known as Palestine, not Israel. In fact that was the first lie of Christianity that Jesus was not black and the second was that the foundation of the story was recorded thousands of years before this man’s birth.

It is believed that he raised the dead, walked on water, fed the poor, and healed the sick. All of which was written by others after his death much in the same way man created this place called “Hell”. This brings me back to religion that resembles nothing like what Jesus taught while he walked among us. Many tend to wrap themselves in the clichés of the “Word” and take every word literally while they give to the greedy and not the needy.

Let’s be clear religion is a business used as a mental tool of man. Jesus said he will return and if he were to visit your church – you would not let him in? If I offend anyone – sorry – but being a Christian is more than posting cute religious pictures with bible verses on your Facebook wall and Instagram!

My Grandfather told me, when I asked as a young boy; what would happen when we get to heaven. He told me Christians will get three surprises when they reach heaven. (1) They will be surprised who they see when they get there. (2) They will be surprised who they don’t see when they get there and (3) they will be surprised if the make it there themselves.

All Jesus asked of us was to “Give Each Other LOVE!” And that is my Thought Provoking Perspective…

A Conversation On Race

I have thought long and hard about writing this post about the mythical idea of having a conversation about race as our president suggests. I can start and finish the conversation in one sentence. “Go to church on Sunday, look around as you worship, and you will realize that it is the most segregated hour and place in America.” How can you have a conversation with people who have you believing that the Savor looks like them!

I take issue with those from the right and those of the other hue who paint every African American as a thug, baby momma, or worst. Let me remind you that there were people during slavery who saw all Negroes as slaves: freeman or not - a view based on skin color. In more recent times, there were also people of that ilk when asked about the March on Washington said in overwhelming numbers that “Martin Luther Coon”, as they referred to him, was stirring up trouble because there was no problem with race. When in fact, Negroes could not use the same toilet or drink out of the same water fountain.

If every living soul can see that racism exists in our culture, particularly toward black men; yet from the beginning of the nation, by law, and laws decided by the Supreme Court expressed such as truth. How in God’s name can there be a conversation? I would compare them to those Whites who chose to die rather than admit that slavery was wrong and should end. Bill O, Sean H and those of the Fox News crowd who has ginned-up like minded people with the view that “there is nothing to see her”. Oh, let’s not forget the Drugster who has said he wants to refer to African Americans as “Niggers”.

Let’s be honest, the subject of race has been with us and against “us” from the day they wrote the Constitution. It was always intended that “Coloreds” be a nation of people living in a nation without a nationality. This is about “privilege” for those who have been the majority and know that it is threatened. As the country continues to evolve it is predicted that as soon as the next generation that privilege may soon end, which is why the Voting Rights was gutted.

I can go on and on about the historical facts that are clear and present. They called it the building of a nation. We call it building a nation on our backs and through slavery meant we got nothing as a result. Just look at the Zimmerman verdict, it should show all of us that “racism is here” and if the last four-hundred year is any evidence of progress – the so-called conversation will be like striking a match in a windstorm.

Finally, let me just give my opinion on the latest shameful jury person “B29” who spoke out concerning her part in the Zimmerman trial verdict. Mandy you have no right to put yourself in the shoes of Trayvon’s mother because you have not lost a child. I hope for your actions or inaction - “You never have another good night sleep for the rest of your life”. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

When We Were Negro

There was a time not so long ago when we were called Negro a category distinction that came with good and bad aspects of living during that era. The bad; it was a distinction by law that made people of African descent second class citizens and we were a people subjected to the wretchedness of unequal treatment by law. 

The good; in most cases our communities were united, supportive, and quite frankly the envy of all other races and cultures. We respected each other in ways that have disappeared today.

This term “Negro” is a Spanish term that means Black but no Spanish culture uses it to describe people of color. The term lost its distinction during the 1960s when the terms to describe those of African descent evolved to Black and now almost universally as African American – instead of human. Now, the word “Negro” (publications used a lower case “n”) has almost become pejorative.

I began to pounder this thought when I received a comment from someone of the other hue who used the usual “dog Whittles”, i.e., “We want to take my country back”. It’s really kinda funny because I can imagine the Native America people making this kind of remark but I digress!

This comment got me thinking! When we were called “Negro” in the 1950s, “only 9 percent of black families with children were headed by a single parent,” according to “The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies” by Kay Hymowitz. “Black children had a 52 percent chance of living with both their biological parents until age 17. In 1959, “only 2 percent of black children were reared in households in which the mother never married.” When we were Negroes our culture was the envy of all other race with respect to statistics such as this.

By contrast today, now that we’re called African-Americans, according to Hymowitz, those odds of living with both parents had “dwindled to a mere 6 percent” by the mid-1980s. More shocking there are statistics that reflect more than 70 percent of the births in the African American community are to single mothers. Not to mention the infant mortality rates that are in the top percentile of all other races, as well as being at the top of every category that is harmful to our survival.

Let me make a few points here; when we were Negroes; we had names like Joshua, Aaron, Paul, Esther, Melba, Cynthia and Ida. Now that we are African Americans, our names are bastardized versions of alcohol from Chivas to Tequila to C(S)hardonney. When we were called “Negro” and still fighting in many parts of the country for basic human rights like the right to vote, we couldn’t wait for the polls to open. We knew friends, family and acquaintances had died getting us the right to vote. Dogs and fire hoses were used to keep us away, yet still we came. By contrast most African-Americans didn’t show up to vote until the election of 2008.

When we were “Negro”, according to the Trust For America’s Health’s “F as in Fat,” report, “only four states had diabetes rates above 6 percent. … The hypertension rates in 37 states about 20 years ago were more than 20 percent.” Now that we’re African-Americans, that report shows, “every state has a hypertension rate of more than 20 percent, with nine more than 30 percent. Forty-three states have diabetes rates of more than 7 percent, and 32 have rates above 8 percent. Adult obesity rates for blacks topped 40 percent in 15 states, 35 percent in 35 states and 30 percent in 42 states and Washington, DC.

Let me point out a few more obvious things that are distinctly different. When we were “Negro”, the one-room church was the community center that everyone used. Now that we’re African-Americans, our churches are lavish Maga-Churches with pastors, in many cases, who are more concerned about the “greedy than the needy”. They need planes, bodyguards, and have ATM machines at the entrance. Many of today’s sanctuaries, compared to the back-in-the-day churches, usually sit empty because the last thing the new church wants to do is invite the community in.

In the days when we were “Negro”, we didn’t have to be convinced that education was the key that opened the lock of success, but now that we’re African-Americans, more than 50 percent of our children fail to graduate high school. To add to this, some say, there are more African Americans in prison than there are in institutions of higher learning. True or not, surely there are more African Americans in prison in comparison to the population ratio.

More disturbing is the manner, for the most part, how we represent ourselves. When we were Negroes, the last thing a young woman wanted to look like was a harlot or a young man a thug, but now that we’re African Americans, many of our young girls dress like hootchie manas and our young boys imitate penitentiary custom and wear their pants below the butt line. In prison culture this suggests that these men are available for sex with other men.

There is surely enough blame to go around for the decline of our communities and why we accept and embrace that which we know is destructive. Let me just remind you that others have categorized us as a people, usually for negative reasons, “darkie, colored, N-word, black, ect.” But we were a strong people, united and proud when we were Negro! This is not to say, I long for the back-door, the degradation, the Chit-ling Circuit or the horrors of the time. Rather to say, I want my people back.

We live in the best time of our existence in the place the slaves called “merica”. We have a man who looks like us in the highest office in the land and the most powerful man in the world. This feat is something unmatched since the Resurrection of Christ because no one living or dead could have ever imagined that a Black Man would be president of these United States. I shudder to think what Dr. King and the ghost of the greats whose shoulders we stand would think if they could see us now!!!

So it begs the question – what happened and why? And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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Happy Birthday Emmett Till

On this day, July 25, 1941, Emmett Till was born. Till was the child murdered in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955 at the tender age of fourteen-year-old. The black boy from Chicago supposedly whistled at a white woman in a grocery store. Till didn't understand that he had broken an unwritten law of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head.

Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River the Montgomery bus boycott began.

It’s been fifty-eight years since the events of that fateful night and I simply cannot find the words to describe this heinous crime that has yet to receive justice; much like Trayvon Martin's death in our time. We will never know the significance of their contribution to the world.

Lil Emmett would have been seventy-two years old today! I’ll end by sharing these words by Maya Angelou: “history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” Then came George Zimmerman!!! And that's my Thought Provoking Perspective...

The links below can better inform you of the facts:

The lynching of Emmett Till: a documentary narrative

By Christopher Metress
(free online book)

http://johntwills.com

The Story Continues

I often speak of visiting those places I call Brownsville, you know, those segregated places mandated by law as a result of the wretched system of “Separate but Equal”. I try to resurrect the ghost of the greats that changed the world, which have caused me to live a life promised to all Americans. Having said that, I readily admit there is still a long way to go.

I have shared the African American journey that no doubt is the greatest story ever told. Maybe let me say this more succinctly by quoting Jesse in terms of witnessing our story coming “From the outhouse to the White House”. The irony of this was that Africans were dragged onto the shores of this place the slaves called “merica” to now having a man of African descent in the White House as President. Frankly, this is the most significant event since Christ rose from the grave.

This evolution brought about our acquiescence to political agendas, abdicating our own economic self-sufficiency for the greater good and most working diligently for the economic well-being of African American people. Since the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were written many have died for the rights described therein and we continue to fight for equality still.

Let me leave you with this thought from “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” the most profound novel ever written in my opinion, originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who is known as the father of Black History Month. I might add that this book should be mandatory reading for all African Americans – young and old.

The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that Negroes of his day were being culturally indoctrinated rather than taught in American schools, or not even given the advantage of education. This conditioning, he claims, causes African Americans to become dependent, seeking out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. This assertion is clearly evident nearly eighty years later.

He challenged his readers to become empowered by doing for themselves, regardless of what they were taught: “History shows that it does not matter who is in power... those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they did in the beginning.”

This goes beyond the imagination, irrespective of the many promises that have been made and broken, that fairness exists. Religion teaches us - “don’t worry, we have been taught that when we die there is a place where there is a mansion with streets paved with gold.” Be that as it may, let's agree with the great Curtis Mayfield who wrote: “we are people who are darker than blue”. He also said, “People get ready there’s a train a comin. You don’t need no ticket. All you need is faith to get on board… you just thank the lord.”

Some of you may know George Orwell’s statement about history:

Whoever controls the past controls the future, and whoever controls the present controls the past. And whoever’s in charge of a culture decides what history we get, or tries to decide what history we get, and our job is to look beyond that and to try to find our own history, the one that they don’t want us to have. You know what I mean by "they." I won’t—I won’t give you any names, but there is—there’s always a "they."

I have said often that “Black History is American History”. We have witnessed the first man of African descent elected president of these United States and I am thankful to have lived to see what no one living or dead ever thought would occur. God Bless America but the train has not reached its destination and the greatest story ever told will continue! And that is my Thought Provoking Perspective.

http://johntwills.com/

AMAZON

"Just a Season"

and

Legacy – A New Season 

Gone Too Far Rush

The carnival barker Rush Limbaugh offered one of the saddest commentary’s I think I have ever heard over the airwaves. Frankly, his latest outburst lets me know that he has finally lost his damn mind or he has relapsed and reverted back to drugs. I have to question his frame of mind with respect to his rewrite of history. He told his listeners on Monday that “it’s time for this white guilt to end… if any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, its Caucasians.”

The drugster proffered a theory that only lives in his mind or maybe the racist who listen to him. According to Limbaugh, compared to other parts of the world, slavery in America was “by no means…anywhere near the worst.” He went on to say that Native Americans started wars with each other for slaves, and that “Ancient Rome went to war to win more slaves.”

According to Media Matters, Limbaugh closed his argument by saying “despite it all; no other race has ever fought a war for the purpose of ending slavery, which we did. Nearly 600,000 people were killed in the Civil War. It’s preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for slavery when they’ve done more to end it than any other race, and within the bounds of the Constitution to boot. And yet white guilt is still one of the dominating factors in American politics. It’s exploited, it’s played upon, it is promoted, used, and it’s unnecessary.”

Oh, there is more!

Limbaugh made headlines last week for his comments following Zimmerman trial witness Rachel Jeantel’s interview on CNN’s Piers Morgan. During the interview, Jeantel said there was a different meaning to the n-word when it ends in ‘a’ as opposed to ‘er.’ Limbaugh said the n-word ending in ‘a’ on his radio show the following day, adding that because of Jeantel’s statements, the drugster believes he should be able to the N-WORD from now on. Again, he has lost his damn mind and crossed the line!

LAW AND ORDER THEME!!!

With the prevailing discourses of politicians and anti-public intellectuals who believe that the legacy of the Enlightenment needs to be reversed this clown has secured his spot at the top of the list. Politicians such as Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich along with talking heads such as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Anne Coulter have made outrageous statements but they don’t have the reach of this nut. All are symptomatic of a much more disturbing assault on critical thought, if not rational thinking itself. This language is devoid of power or command of logic and divorced from social responsibility, critical analysis or facts.

I thought the above mentioned were a special kind of like but Rush has taken insanity to a whole nother level! The beauty of his racist views is that big name and small locals companies are dumping his to the tune of about 2700 sponsors so far. Some of the most loyal Rush Limbaugh sponsors, who have ignored protesters for over a year… are now bolting.

These racist rants must stop! So let’s give him a lot of press and say to his sponsors that the drugster must go for the sake of humanity. So use your power through social media to put an end to this clown - by any means necessary. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

A Thought for Women

There is enormous outcry for the murder of Trayvon Martin and rightfully so, but I want to speak to all the women and mothers. You are the givers of life. It is you who birth and nurture life though a maternal bond that is unbreakable. So the Zimmerman verdict, in my view, was one rendered from a completely immoral place and just plain wrong. My thought is how do you see your place in life; in light of the decision if it was your child or family.

The conservative agenda is simply a war on you. The death of a child is a loss from within your soul that can never be replaced. The conservatives want to control your right to make decisions with respect to your health. Women, in many cases, make less money for doing the same work even when you are often times the head of the home having to support children alone.  More importantly, the life you gave to the world could be taken away from you horrifically in an instant.

I am part of a horrible fraternity of people who have buried a child. As a father, I will tell you, it is the worst thing you can experience in life. Try to imagine for a moment that one of the children you carried for nine months in your womb was needlessly taken by someone just because they wanted too and felt no remorse - understand that death is final!

Lest then take a historical look at women throughout America history. You were viewed by white men much in the same way as a slave at the signing of the Constitution – you were given no rights nor mentioned in the founding of this nation. After the Civil War slave were supposed to have been given their freedom – not you! It took until 1920 for the system to even allow you to vote. Today, in spite of law, it is viewed that you have no right to decide or make decisions concerning you reproductive rights or healthcare.

With that said, women are viewed as second class citizens or dare I say a slave to the wishes of conservatives and those who control the system. If you are black you possess a double dose of bigotry from the system; meaning you are a woman and black. I suggest that you look very closely at Sabrina Martin and feel her pain, look into her face and see the pain of her loss. “It could well be you and the child that you birthed who could have been Trayvon!

Stand-up – Standup for right and for life, and I will say well done my good and faithful servants. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

Do We Need Freedom Papers

In the wake of George Zimmerman not guilty verdict a man, in my view a vigilante, that hunted him down and killed a young black boy in his gated neighborhood. Although we know the end result of the night of the murder; we do not know all of the particulars of that night, but we do know for sure, if we can believe what we hear from the jury members, George Zimmerman did get a jury of his peers; obviously of his mindset.

As I think about history I am reminded of a time when slave catchers roamed the nation in a historical context surrounding and preceding this case. I came to realize that people of African descent who were required to carry “freedom papers” to prove they belonged when they were and when they did not produce them the encounter often ended with similar outcomes from the Zimmerman types; upholding a system of racial slavery and the bodies of laws which restricted and criminalized black mobility and autonomy.

These laws resulting in blackness being synonymous with enslavement, and the movement and activities of black people were severely curtailed. There was no right to bear arms which was banned for the purpose of control. This legal system relied upon all white colonists to police and survey black bodies. They were the eyes and ears of the law, and the courts gave them great latitude in assessing where black people could and could not be at any given time.

Overtime the criminal justice slave system became more sophisticated with the courts requiring blacks to carry documents which validated their rights to be in certain spaces and their ability to navigate their freedom to move. Enslaved people carried pieces of paper called slave passes, documents written by their owners, which indicated their destination, time of departure, arrival and return, and sometimes the purpose of their journey.

Even free people of African descent were required to carry “freedom papers” at all times to validate their free status and hence delineate the places where they could be. Any white person, regardless of their legal authority, could demand to see these documents and interrogate a black person at any time, without any justifiable cause. If the black person in question could not produce such documents, they could be arrested, beaten, maimed or murdered with impunity.

Towns and communities hired groups of white men, everyday citizens, to “patrol” Southern space, which was a more formal arm of this system of surveillance. These vigilantes had the power to control and police black movement in any way they saw fit, with the sanction of law behind their actions, no matter how brutal they might be. Black people lived in constant fear of these men that evolved into the KKK.

People of this ilk during and after Reconstruction created “Black Codes” not only sought to maintain a cheap, servile labor force throughout the South, they also criminalized black movement and were arrested for violating Black Codes. After arrest, they were fined, jailed, and often times their labor was sold to white landowners who forced them to work as though they were slaves again. Over time, this kind of law and order morphed into its most extreme and horrific manifestation; the lynching of African-Americans throughout the twentieth century.

This is the legacy of America’s racial past that is similar to George Zimmerman’s decision to kill Trayvon Martin and his acquittal. This mindset is part of the reason why black males are suspicious and criminal to many whites who assume they are “up to something” simply because they were moving through space.

Zimmerman was simply doing what many Southern whites have done for centuries and believes they are right to do so. Martin seemed out of place, and Zimmerman was going to find out where he belonged. When Trayvon Martin did not present his “freedom papers” that night, when he elected not to explain why he was where he was; he chose to confront, and Zimmerman stalked the boy and killed him because it was “God’s plan”.

The Police department seemed to agree with Zimmerman’s assessment of Martin’s alleged out-of-place-ness. Therefore, on the night of February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman decided that Trayvon Martin was not entitled to move freely as a free American. He was not entitled to be free without verifying his freedom to a white man. When Zimmerman came upon a black male body that refused to justify his movement through a space that he deemed off limits, he enacted a brand of “law and order” which generations of white Southerners have practiced.

History is known to repeat itself. It looks like we are witnessing a return to America’s wretched past. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

A New Low For The Right

On Tuesday the Washington Post defended the publication of a column written by Richard Cohen where he argued that George Zimmerman was justified in being suspicious of Trayvon Martin on the night he stalked and killed the unarmed black teenager. He says this because Trayvon was wearing a hoodie, which he suggests is a “uniform we all recognize”. My first thought was this sounded like the familiar statement “You People”.

Let me say that I know everyone has the right to freedom of speech and I appreciate it because in theory – so do I! However, some of Cohen’s comments were reprehensible and at best slanted to a Z-man mind set. For example, he said in the article: “I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist”. “The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.”

When Politico asked Cohen about the hoodie “uniform” that he described Martin wearing the night he was killed. He said, “It’s what’s worn by a whole lot of thugs”. “Look in the newspapers, online or on television: you see a lot of guys in the mugshots wearing hoodies.” Irresponsible!!!

I, like many reasonable people, reject Zimmerman claim of self-defense in spite of the all white – minus one – jury  that acquitted him of second-degree murder saying he was justified in shooting this boy “just because he was walking while black”. I might add that many share my view of the verdict that has sparked outrage and protests around the country. The good thing, if there is anything close to a good thing, is the decision continues to be discussed and debated on cable news, on social media and in newspaper opinion pages asking to address the system that is obviously biased toward people of color and black men in particular.

Cohen’s column drew sharp criticism and mockery online Tuesday:

“Richard Cohen’s not a racist, he just thinks it’s reasonable to assume young black men are all criminals,” tweeted Slate’s Matt Yglesias.

“I totally recognize the hoodie uniform,” tweeted The Washington Post’s own Ezra Klein. “I wore it at UC Santa Cruz. Weirdly, no one thought I was dangerous.”

“Washington Post is scared of young black men,” tweeted Circa editor-in-chief Anthony De Rosa.

And Washington City Paper editor Mike Madden tweeted his own summation of the piece: “Post columnist Richard Cohen: ‘… I am a racist.’”

The Washington Post’s editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, defended running the column in an email to The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “If I had not published the column, just as many people would be asking why the Post can’t tolerate diverse points of view,” Hiatt said.

“I think if people want a ‘conversation about race,’ as is frequently suggested, they should be open to a range of views and perspectives. We already have published multiple such views — not only Richard Cohen’s, but Gene Robinson on the same page, Ruth Marcus and Jonathan Capehart and our own editorial the day before — and we’ve got more coming,” Hiatt continued. “If people don’t like a particular opinion, my feeling is they should respond to it, not seek to stifle it.”

Robinson’s column this week — “Black boys denied right to be young” — offered a perspective from a different point of view from a black man who knows the unfairness of the system and racism concerning Cohen’s justification for being suspicious of Martin. Further, it is worth mentioning that the Attorney General, the number one law enforcement officer, told a story of being profiled in Washington DC as a prosecutor.

Robinson said, “Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent,” Robinson wrote. “Black boys in this country are not allowed to be children” but “are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace”.

“I don’t know if the jury, which included no African Americans, consciously or unconsciously bought into this racist way of thinking — there’s really no other word,” Robinson continued. “But it hardly matters, because police and prosecutors initially did.”

This isn’t the first time Cohen and others has come under fire for making insensitive comments about young black men and as we see there are many who want to make the Z-man a hero or a champion of their racial biases. Much in the same way Paula Deen got into trouble for saying "n¡gga" and those who found no problem with it. What we have here is that Zimmerman killed one and that opens the door for others to get away with it too.

LAW AND ORDER THEME!!!

America has caused too many pains and much terror upon the black race from the first day we landed on the shores, and continue to remind us that we are not a white man and thereby not citizens. This ideology is not new. There were white people who signed the Constitution who owned slaves and thought like this man. There were also men of the same ilk who fought a Civil War over the issue of race where supposedly we were free with all right and privileges – we see how true that was!

Thought the prism of whites many view African Americans as little more than what they said in the beginning – less than human. These people also see women in the same way as it relates to reproductive rights, voting rights, or for that matter anything that could harm their view of the inalienable right to supremacy. Racism is a mindset, a twisted understanding of a bias toward another, and rooted in a belief in white entitlement.

These same people speak of life though their anti-abortion views. Yet, they believe in retroactive abortion through the killing of black man. One of the defense lawyers said, if the Z-man was black, he would never have been arrested. These kinds of statements are the problem. In their protection of manifest destiny and white privilege there seems to be no end to this non-sense.

The true fact is this: the country’s minority population is rapidly growing and in not too many years they will be the minority. These race hustlers are trying to sell a narrative that “Nat Turner is at the door of the plantation house and white people need to be afraid”. So the NRA and the right wing nuts as white people shoot to kill the scary black man. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…