BlackMan Time

Archive for October, 2009

Don’t you just love it in the movies when a couple splits up in a scene where the woman tearfully walks away from the man after saying dialogue such as: “I love you but…you’ve upset me. And now I must go. Goodbye and don’t try to stop me…”

He initially tries feably to stop her but seeing how determined she is to leave, he just sighs resignedly in a gesture that says: “aw, well…” Then he turns and goes about his previous business, thinking about what just happened there…

Some time later he runs into the woman again. They strike up a conversation which is initially awkward but after a while they fall back into a groove.

At a key point he says what’s really on his mind: “Why did you run off like that?” She replies something likeo: “I just wanted to see if you would run after me.”

The question I’m asking is why do women manipulate situations like that? Why is it so important to test a man this way? What does the “run after me” part mean to a woman?

It just seem so unnecessary and pointless from a man’s perspective…

So the BBC gave the BNP a platform to perform? Why did they not invite a British black man on the panel? No disrespect to novelist Bonnie Greer but she’s American and although she’s black she cannot profess to have experienced Britain in the same way that most UK-born black people have. So why didn’t the BBC see it fit to redress this issue?

The programme, chaired by Sir David Dimbleby had the panellists Jack Straw, MP; Baroness Warsi, Conservative peer; Bonnie Greer, playwright and Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman.

Maybe it’s just me but I think a failure to even consider having a black male panellist is part of the overrall institutional racism that has befallen us over the years. The BBC by this omission is really saying they don’t feel there’s any black man in Britain capable of engaging an obnoxious racist fool like Griffin when the reality is quite different.

Even I would’ve been happy to appear. My focussed anger with the fact that I was opposed to him being given the opportunity in the first place, would’ve proven far more potent than Greer’s meandering, multi-syllable intellectual dead-ended responses, for instance.

In the end it was a freak show and the biggest freak had his day. Or is it just me, a black man freaking out…

Of late the state has been making noises about the need to get more involved in the welfare of children to the point where they’re making suggestions to do this even before any problem occur.

This chilling prospect reminds me of the film AI (Artificial Intelligence) which depicts a world where criminals are arrested long before a crime is committed.

For now the most hoopla is around whether parents have the right to beat or smack their kids and how much punishment is actually abuse, etc. The debate is raging.

There’s a place for discipline in any situation where order is expected but the manner in which the discipline is implemented (notice I didn’t say ‘enforced’) is telling.

Environment

Usually discipline is influenced by environmental culture in that the punishment should always fit the crime and punishment or the tools used to administer it should also be appropriate.

If a child deserves a beating I see no problem with that but one should exercise restraint. Dropping a used car on a child is obviously inappropriate; neither is caning a six month old child.

If discipline can be established and maintained by gentle prodding only then this would be best but gentle prodding may not be appropriate if the environment is harsh and the only form of punishment the child will respond to is rough justice.

Do you think it is illegal for a political party to exclude you from joining based on your colour, race, class, gender or sexual preference? You probably answer no, right? If you did then your view coincide with the opinions of other decent, law-abiding citizens.

It comes as a little two faced¹ surprise, therefore, that one so-called political party have been able to get one candidate elected to the European parliament and bagged itself an appearance on the BBC flagship Question Time political programme in the process. That guilty party is the British National Party, an ultra right wing, racist outfit that openly preaches race hate towards non-white members of the population.

How did they get elected? And why is the BBC giving about to give to give them airtime under the proviso of equality of opportunities to media interest on their channel?

Call me scenical but the BNP’s appearance on the BBC is happening because someone wants it to happen. Someone, maybe even a group, wants the BNP black race-hating filth and Enoch Powell-like scaremongering propaganda to reach a mass audience. Only the BBC alone knows why it would want that.

My only hope is that during the programme the BNP will fall down on its face and knock out all its stinking, rotten teeth. And gums.

That would make my day.

1. Image Credit: This painting, entitle “Two Faced” is by artist Joseph David Greenwood and shows Marcin Bondarowicz [↩]

Here’s a question for you: if your child(ren) or the child(ren) of someone you know very well broke the law or were planning to do so in a big way would you help to shield and protect them from prosecution? Or, would you report them to the police and let the law do the rest?

This must be the dilemma facing parents and family members in that situation.

As good citizens we are obliged to conduct ourselves in a manner that is fitting for the rest of our community. However this concept breaks down when it comes to siding with society (or outsiders) against your own child, however wayward that child has been.

Thick Blood

Blood, indeed, is thicker than water, and this takes precedence in some cases over the fact our inclination towards nepotism could cost us far more in the long run than in doing the morally correct or legally commendable thing.

Who wants to have it on their conscience that they sent their children to prison or condemn them to a death sentence? Is it really only those who doesn’t value family ties? Or those who consdier themselves really good citizens? Maybe even both…

In essence it would be impossible for most people to turn their child in to the law unless their crimes were too shockingly heinous to ignore. One hopes never to be tested this way, of course, but dealing with matters internally is best. In the end it is up to our us and our conscience.

For that’s when the real emotional and psychological dilemma begins…

Boxers Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson met again but this time it was on The Oprah Winfey Show, last week.

Clearly they’ve buried the hatchet, thankfully, not in each other’s skull! Holyfield said he wanted to appear with Tyson on television to demonstrate to young people caught up in violence that reconciliation is always possible. “We can come together. We know you can come together,” he said.

I just love the strong positive message this public reconciliation emits following their world title fight at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas on June 28, 1997 when Tyson bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s ear in their third round of their championship fight.

Nuff respect is due!

Photo: (c) Splash News, 2009.

I’ve been asked this question more times than I care to admit but usually by white people uncomfortable with the idea of a custom specifically celebrating black culture.

From their perspective a Black Anything event seeminly excludes them for the simple reason they are not black. They contrast this with the fact that they do not have a White History Month, for example.

It is perhaps irrelevant to them that the reason we have Black History Month is to try and redress the imbalance that exist in a society where people of African descent are in the minority and where institutional racism and discrimination prevent them from getting equality of services and opportunities.

Colour Blind

One white former male work colleague tells me: “I see you and other guys of other races as my friends, not my ‘black’ friends, but kind of colourless.” He worries that events specifically tailored to black people ” is another divide against uniting all people of every race and coming to a point where we get away from seeing people still as a product of their colour.”

It is clear the colour focus is a worry to white people. Why should this be so? Some of the vilest racial epithets (those beginning with ‘n’ and rhyming with bigger, for instance) are not terms black people invented for themselves. Or maybe the colour focus forces them to reflect on why black people exist in such large numbers in the west: the result of illegal and inhumane white trafficking in African slaves some 400 years ago.

Others see hope for humanity in working towards a united world view, with just one people, human with no distiction of country, class, monetry value etc. In fact the kind of world John Lennon envision in his classic track “Imagine”.

Utopia?

Can such utopia be realised while we still have a reality where presidents unleash illegal wars to avenge the failures of their fathers? Or wars to steal the assets of another nation just because they can get support from other nations with similar interests?

Of one thing we are very certain: skin colour is important as a cultural characteristic yet, to quote a popular song, “until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes there will be war (division).” Learning to love and respect someone regardless of their customs, culture or colour should perhaps be the ultimate goal for us all.

Is that a world you would like to help develop?

If you’re based in the UK and you haven’t yet noticed this month is designated Black History Month. It is a time for observation of all things Black, particularly celebrating the inglorious history, progress and development of black culture, whatever that really means.

There are some who would much rather abolish the commemoration of this event altogether. They argue using the term ‘Black’ or referring to people by their skin colour is either defamatory or ghettoise people of African descent.

Some use alternative adjectives to describe British-based black people. These include African, Afrikan, Black British, African British, Black Briton, Afro Saxon, Afro Caribbean, Black Caribbean and so forth.

I have heard of attempts to change the name of the celebration from Black History Month to Cultural Heritage Month to accommodate Asian, Chinese, Jewish and other cultures. This overlooks the fact that these other cultures already have their own designated celebrations. From this I suspect they simply want to totally eradicate the name.

I even hear some Asians (from India, Pakistan, etc.) have started calling themselves ‘black’ in order to get access to local authority and community grants to launch Black History projects. But are Asian people black? Were they (or their ancestors) the ones stolen from the African mainland and brought to the Caribbean? The answer is, of course, no.

There is always someone not comfortable with people of African descent celebrating what is called Black History Month so they seek to benefit from it or to diminish and/or descredit its importance if they cannot profiteer from it.

Left up to them they would erase any memory of the Black Holocaust that is the African transhipment slavery; that we should somehow ‘move along’ and forget about Western involvement in the trading and trafficking of human cargo that happened 400 years ago. At worst they want to push the idea that Black people are now so assimilated into British society that any links or ties to Africa is artificial, a fantasy or misguided.

The reality is whether we have a designated Black History Month celebration or not Black people in the UK are a testament that our legacy is filled with an unpleasant chapter of history that no amount of white washing can eradicate.

Just how much more white washing can an African take before he is actually assimilated?

Black History Month.

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Black History Month (31 times).

I wished they would just stop pretending they really give a damn about the history of people from African descent while the descendants of old pirates are still robbing us and have exchanged the merchant ships with commercial endorsements that white wash our legacy with a 31 day celebration.

Me, bitter? Are you kidding?! I am proud to be black but my blackness cannot be contained within the confines of one month. In fact it is taking me a lifetime to understand this.

How about you?

So, I asked the question: can a woman’s tender (love and) care cease towards the (innocently hurtful) child she bear?

The answers came back thick and fast ranging from no; this is impossible to yes, sometimes a child will say really hurtful things but they don’t really mean it.

In the stages of growing from child to adult there comes a point when everything seems to make sense. And then there’s a time when nothing makes sense. During the time nothing makes sense we can be our own worse enemy.

During the sensible time we realise what’s important in life and what clearly isn’t. Saying and/or doing hurtful thing to one’s mother is something that destroys one’s soul slowly from the inside.

So, at some point the child, even if s/he’s grown taller than a tree, will come back to her/his senses and the mother needs to be there ready to accept her/him on their return.

Love is exactly like that.