Baltimore: "Burn Baby Burn"

One tweet hit it dead on, to paraphrase: Our country is stuck in a lose-lose "wash" cycle between the police and black citizens they patrol.

Kill, mourn, march, repeat...

And, in some places like Furguson and Bmore, add burn baby burn after the futility of peaceful marches.

And by burn we mean throwing a lawless temper tantrum and asking the Verizon question: can you hear me now?

Young Turks Respond: Police Resign After Town's First Black Woman Mayor Elected

GOP war machine

Hidden History of The Nile - Religious Evolution & The Holy Trinity

I recently had another disturbing conversation regarding Africa with a sister of color.

This relatively young sister's comments on the motherland were consistent with the Africa of western media...fill in the negative stereotype.

Needless to say, I shared with her articles, images and videos on my website of an Africa rarely depicted in the American press. The response from her was telling:

"This is Africa? Wow, really? I have to do more of my own research"

I must add. If the western press continues to collectively present a distorted image of African-American life on a daily basis, we have to recognize, likewise, this same bias is embedded in their reporting of Africa.

The images support the mentality that sustains an international status quo or caste system most economically, politically, culturally and socially friendly to people of European descent.

 But once again, I want to share another video that shatters many of our preconceived beliefs. This is an insightful video of the African Traditional Religion's (ATR) contribution and presence in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Many of the beliefs, ritual traditions, storylines, celebrations and practices are rooted in ATR.

The boys in blue: This is what we do.

When watching the disturbingly explicit snuff film, the most incredulous sequence to me is how casual and matter-fact does this person -- with a uniform, badge and gun -- behave when he decides to execute Walter Scott by shooting him in the back -- an unarmed suspect fleeing the scene.

His demeanor suggests: "This is what I do...on a regular."

And then this person -- with a uniform, badge and gun -- just calmly saunters over his kill, handcuffs a dead body and runs with all deliberate speed to retrieve an object (stun gun?) which he plants next to the motionless body.

Cruz control: The Tea Party's main man of contradictions

It's not what I do, it's what I say!

Wannabe POTUS, Ted Wacko Bird Cruz is definitely a larger than life example of the contradictions, hypocrisy and convoluted logic of the Tea Party.

For Starters...

The TP folks, with the help of Fox news, created the birther movement -- challenging the citizenship of our supposedly Kenyan born President Obama and by extension de-legitimizing his presidency -- are now the same "Cruz for President" enthusiastic supporters.

Problem is...

Mansa Musa: The Golden Days of West Africa

Here are two more excellent, informative videos on the civilizations of Western Africa during the middle-ages.

Both videos provide a more accurate depiction of Sub-Sahara Africa than most of us learned in our World history classes in public schools.

We truly live in an emerging Golden Age for Africa -- 7 out of 10 of the world's fastest growing economies are in the Motherland -- as such even African history has seen a rise in new scholarship.

This new scholarship -- new for western scholars as authors like Chancellor Williams, Ivan Van Sertima, John Henrik Clarke  taught this history for decades -- is effectively dispelling lies, myths and distortions; hence, they are enlightening the world about Africa's glorious past.

History: What's past is prologue.

The phrase means that history influences and sets the context for the present. The quotation is engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C.^[1]


As the old adage states:

If I had a dollar for every time I have been queried about where does my passion for history come from, well, ostensibly, I would be materially wealthy.

By a vast majority, I am unequivocally informed that history is BORING.

I get it

President Obama Selma Speech: "More Bridges To Be Crossesd"

We are storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told….

That’s what America is.  Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others

Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes