BlackMan Time

Archive for June, 2005

I wish Live 8/BandAid organiser Bob Geldof would shut the eff up! He keeps making statements like “President George W. Bush has done more for Africa than any other U.S. president…” and it’s really getting on my nerves.

He has just given an interview to Time magazine, in which he admitted recently defending Bush in France on that score. Why is he defending Bush? What, exactly has Bush done to help Africa so much?

His Irish counterpart Bono, lead singer with the group U2 who also participated in the interview, said Bush could still show more commitment to Africa. “He feels he’s already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he has,” said Bono. “But he started from far too low a place.”

Bono sounds like he’s more down-to-earth when lavishing praise on Bush or the “good cop” in this Irishman world police force!

We actually applaud Geldof’s efforts but we still question certain aspects of his involvement and defintely his support for Bush, a man we see as evil incarnate trying to pass for normal while hiding the suit of respectibility.

Live 8 is intended to build public support for debt forgiveness and other aid for Africa by the world’s major economic powers.

The minute you get involved in any Black-focused project, you have to deal with (or consider) a number of colour specific and cultural issues. One of the most pressing is the issue of whether to accept white participation and input.

Another is whether to encourage others whose views, lifestyle or opinions we either do not respect or endorse in our personal lives.

We have had to deal with both of these issues on BlackMag.

Believe it or not there are many Blacks (this side of Michael Jackson!) who are still uncomfortable with their colour. These kinds are generally nervous about anything critical of the white race. Some may even side with similarly nervous whites who see any criticism of them as prejudice, even if they call it racism.

Share Space

Then there are those who hate having to share the same space as white people in any shape or form. When examined closely they may even display the same dislike for whites as some racist whites show Blacks.

We try our best to accommodate all viewpoints but feel some people have unrealistic expectations of our motives, even after we have outlined our objectives several times. Sometimes it is necessary to state (and restate) the fact that we do not fight against differing opinions but that our focus is strictly on Black.

I do not personally believe our cause is strengthened by seeking to exclude white people, based on their colour and race alone. What’s the difference between this viewpoint and that of racist whites who discriminate against Blacks with the same kind of bigotry?

Simultaneously I do not feel we should endorse and/or embrace white involvement without first ascertaining their motive. In the end I feel it is only respect of people’s differences that will allow us to function as one entity without enmity. But it takes respect in every aspect for things to work.

Is this too much to expect?

The morning after the Michael Jackson is innocent child molestation verdict and these are some of the facts, legally and/or otherwise true, that we know. Michael Jackson:-

• Is or was not “let off”
• Did not “get away”
• Is not a guilty person who has somehow evaded justice
• Is not a paedophile
• Is not a proven child molester
• Is not a white person
• Has severely underestimated public opinion in his love of children
• Has been shocked by the greed of people within his employ
• Is too naive and innocent for his own good
• Is/was the victim of a media lynching
• Is/was the victim of a money extortion and blackmail attempt
• Almost was the victim of a miscarriage of justice
• Is a Black person with a troubled past
• Is a big lover and supporter of children
• Is a big charity giver and supporter
• Makes the world’s biggest selling records of all time

The question is will the media, people and public opinion allow this so-called justice to reign or will they continue to treat an innocent man like he's some kind of criminal?

A sister rang me the other day to praise BlackMag and to offer whatever help she can give. She is the president-elect of an important African Caribbean Society.

During our conversation she asked “why is Black people so antagonistic towards each other?” and she used her experience and treatment she received from members of a pro-Black organisation (PBO) as her example.

My friend is an attractive mixed race woman of Black Jamaican and Chinese parentage. Her looks does not put her in the ‘classic’ Black conscious woman league. But Black conscious she is, does and works in spreading.

She said members of the PBO looked at her and treated her like she was the enemy, because she did not fit their criteria of what a Black person should look like.

Black Ignorance

I recognise this kind of ignorance because I too have seen it displayed in people who feel they have the franchise on what being Black is about. They seek to segregate the race strictly and exclusively along colour lines and feel that only Black people should be members of Black organisations and movements to uplift the race.

But if history has taught us anything and from the examples of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Malcolm X and others, is that all race is a part of the struggle for understanding and unity. One hand simply cannot clap and we are interdependent on others for survival, whether we like it or not.

The key to all this, as Garvey has said, is that “unity is strength” yet here we are thinking division and segregation.

I pray that the ones who think and act like this become truly conscious and understand the place and relationship they share within the universe.

Selah.

Ever since I learnt that tap water (or corporation pop as we used to call it!) is actually the River Thames purified and cleaned up, I wince whenever I hear a body has been found in that water. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer to drink bottled water and my preferred choice is Evian.

I don’t actually know how true it is that our local water is provided by the Thames but on those extremely rare occasions when I’ve drank it, it tasted foul. People tell me it’s “hard water” meaning it’s got a whole lot of calcium, magnesium, and other minerals in it.

All I know is that it reduces the cleansing power of soap and produces scale in hot water lines, kettles, bath, toilet iron and other appliances. This led me to think: “If it does that to those appliances, what does it do to the inside of your body?”

There are a number of phrases and sayings we learnt as a kid which were supposed to guide and advise us on lifestyle issues. Stuff like “What don’t kill you, will make you fat” or “Ice don’t carry germ…”

The first is usually used if you accidentally drop a piece of food onto an unclean surface, like the ground, and you pick up the food, brush it off and eat it while saying the phrase: “what don’t kill you will make you fat!” That was supposed to somehow protect you from harm!

The other one reassures you that even if you had a piece of ice on manure then ate it you’d not be harmed because the temperature of the ice would in fact protect you from the harmful bacterior that the mess would contain.

When I think of those two things now I am amazed that I even survived childhood! Not that I ate that much dropped food or sucked s**tty ice but that I even listened to such nonsense! Maybe the nonsense worked because belief kill and belief cures, right? Nevertheless, my attitude now is that anything which touches the ground is trash can fodder and as for ice if I make my own I even boil it because I know most germs die off around boiling point.

As for the local (or any other kind of) water, if it tastes bad to me it is not worth drinking. But, I suppose, I would have to reconsider if I was in a life or death situation.

When the Michael Jackson witchunt is over it will be the end of a tragedy. Regardless what happens it will be the story about celebrity culture and how the media took Michael Jackson as a young man and turned him into this completely bizarre character that he has become.

But he was not an innocent victim in all of this: he went with the media willingly, aided and abetted by his family and parental approval!

On that road to fame, success and stardom, he became a freak. Today, the freak has become a big entertainment draw and every salacious detail has been coming out to satiate those people who just have to have their “Michael Jackson as a freak” fix.

British cable operator Sky have even built a set, hired actors and re-enacted the whole thing as a daily soap opera to satisfy this demand. I am pretty sure they have also syndicated this around the world. In a nutshell, everyone is pimping off the Michael Jackson freak show.

This is why it annoys me when people talk about this being a trial to determine what wrong has been done to what little boy. That is the freakiest thing of all because the family pressing the charges have a (massively suggested) history of dishonesty behind it and have apparently been exposed as money grabbing opportunists.

It all adds to the mix and in my view the court case is an enormous exercise in voyeurism with a whole bunch of men and women waiting for somebody to say the word masturbate in a courtroom or to hear about how Michael Jackson stuck his hand down some little boy’s pants.

Since BlackMag is not into that kind of thing we decided to give the so-called court hearing a miss. And now that it’s drawing to a close it is not a moment’s too soon. We just hope the right verdict is delivered: and that is one where Michael Jackson has been proven innocent but guilty of being a complete idiot!

I don’t think being an idiot is a crime, but if Jackson doesn’t learn his lesson from this then he’s a bigger idiot than I thought.

Exactly 84 years ago, on May 31, 1921, to be precise, one of America’s worst race riots destroyed Greenwood, Okla., a thriving Black community on the outskirts of Tulsa.

A white mob led by Ku Klux Klan members, murdered anything from 100 to 300 Black people and burned the homes of thousands others.

Information about the Tulsa race riot was omitted from history books until fairly recently and this kept many people ignorant of this mass act of terrorism, whites inflicted on a community of Blacks in America.

Greenwood was nick-named Black Wall Street by the New York Stock Exchange because of the wealth it had as a Black community. Black Wall Street, also known as Little Africa, was a community within itself. It had 15,000 residents were wealthy blacks who lived within an isolated society with its own theaters, banks and libraries.

Little is known, also, about the fact that the Greenwood community was the only U.S. city in history to be bombed. There are documented evidence that shows white men used small aeroplanes to fly over the area and to drop molotov cocktail bombs on Black people’s homes below.

When the dust had settled, hundreds of dead bodies laid strewn all over the town. And all of this happened because an innocent Black boy Emmet Till, who was unfamiliar with southern racism and segregation rituals, whistled at a white woman. Her husband then rounded up a posse of his redneck friends and went hunting for the boy.

The rest is history; a history which all too often reveal the hate, filth and evil that lies in the heart of some white people. The same kind of hate that implanted the idea of them enslaving and exploiting Blacks several centuries ago, aspects of which still live on today in the 21st century.

It seems that the evil that (white) men do, does indeed, live after them…

Once again we have the spectacle that a major international music initiative to raise serious money to help Black people, is being led by a ‘concerned’ group of rich white people. We are talking about the Live8 concerts in the UK, Europe and America on July 2, 2005.

This is being planned by musician Bob Geldof feauring a whole host of predominantly white stars performing around the theme to alleviate poverty in Africa.

It is a great sentiment and I applaud the initiative, big time. But, I smell a rat. Funnily enough, a Boomtown Rat!

Bob Geldof has the touch and formula for raising big cash. After all, it is he, along with a lorra help from his showbusiness friends, who were behind the LiveAid concert of 20 years ago. But, although much money was made (nearly a $1 billion by some estimates) poverty is still rife in the areas the money was supposed to benefit.

Also, why does it take white people to organise things on Black people’s behalf for any kind of action to be done? And why are the politicians only talking and delivering anything to Africa, apart from rhetoric?

Why is America so reticent about helping Africa? Why is everyone leaving this to (Irish!) musicians like Geldof and U2 Bono’s to be ambassadors for Africa? What’s wrong with Black people ambassadors of their own Mother country?

These are the kinds of things that makes me wonder about the real motives behind such white-organised initiatives. For, although the idea looks great on paper, in the final analysis we never seem to see any real positive benefit to those being helped.

Call me a sceptical, nit picker if you like.

Oh, and here comes my next question: is it better to have a Black organised concert that doesn’t contribute much to alleviate African poverty? Or a white organised one? Where, exactly, do we draw the line?

Heah, heah, heah: of course doesn’t matter when we’re talking about human suffering. But if you think that then it’s good for you to wake up and smell the reality!

Everything done in the name of Africa or for the benefit of Black people not only has colour as an underlined theme, but probably wouldn’t work in galvanising people to this extent if it wasn’t a factor.

Believe it or not and as far as I see it, that’s how the cookie seem to crumble…