Quote of the night

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

6-28-2012

"Life is like a piece of cloth, and the threads of which it is composed are individual lives. The threads, while being interdependent, are not confounded one with the other. Each follows its own course. Each individual suffers and enjoys the consequences of his own deeds, and not of the deeds of another. The course of each is simple and definite; the whole forming a complicated, yet harmonious, combination of sequences. There are action and reaction, deed and consequence, cause and effect, and the counterbalancing reaction, consequence, and effect is always in exact ratio with the initiatory impulse.

A durable and satisfactory piece of cloth cannot be made from shoddy material, and the threads of selfish thoughts and bad deeds will not produce a useful and beautiful life - a life that will wear well, and bear close inspection. Each man makes or mars his own life; it is not made or marred by his neighbor, or by anything external to himself. Each thought he thinks, each deed he does, is another thread- shoddy or genuine- woven into the garment of his life; and as he makes the garment so must he wear it."

The Mastery Of Destiny

~* James Allen

"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become."

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

6-29-2012

Kill yourself so you can live

"The highest courage is to dare to be yourself in the face of adversity. Choosing right over wrong, ethics over convenience, and truth over popularity... these are the choices that measure your life. Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.

In order for a man to truly live, a part of him has to die. In the months before we are born, the same umbilical cord that gives us life can also wrap itself around our throats and kill us. When we are finally born, the same umbilical cord that fed us in the womb must be cut or tied off. It is time for that part of us to die. If that never occurs, we never mature.

As we grow, life follows the same processes at every stage. There are points where we must let go of old ideas, old habits, and even old lives. When we shed those skins, we allow new ones to grow. If the caterpillar is not ready to lose her old self, she never becomes a butterfly. Having balance is an important thing, but the good must one day dominate the bad for your life to mean anything. In order to become strong, meaningful, worthy human beings, we have to eliminate what is weak within us. Many times, that process is hell, but any metal only becomes strong once it has been through fire. The fire purifies and strengthens the metal, as struggle, sacrifice, and strife do for us. After growing from weak followers to strong leaders, we are required to work for the good of others. Again, it takes a man being completely willing to lose for that man to truly win."

Rap, Race and Revolution: Solutions for Our Struggle

~*Supreme Understanding

 

[yeahisaidit]

"Internal woman – External man"

Many relationships start off as booty calls. The man and woman willingly consent to having sex with no attachments. No one tricked or manipulated anyone into doing anything they didn’t want to do. Both parties agreed to just get their freak on every now and then. And many women are cool with this – at first.

Women are external creatures. The female sexual organ is on the inside of her body. Men are external creatures. And the male sexual organ is on the outside of his body. Women are more sexually intrigued by things they hear or feel, or things that touch them emotionally, such as a whispered sweet-nothings. Men are more sexually aroused by things they can physically see, such as a cute face, big breasts, or a nice booty.

When a man engages in sex, many times it’s just a physical form of recreation, and that’s it. It’s no different from playing football or throwing darts. It’s just a way to achieve an orgasm.

Men mostly don’t develop an emotional attachment through sexual intercourse. But for women it is inevitable that they’ll become emotionally attached to someone who is literally going up in her body. When a man is having sex with a woman, he has physical molecules, DNA, and other bodily fluids intertwining with hers. So he literally leaves a part of himself inside that woman.

It’s very difficult to detach yourself, emotionally, from a person who is physically going into your body (especially on a constant basis). This is why woman seem more emotional about relationships, especially ones that involve sex.

When a woman is having a casual sex relationship with a man over a period of time she will think the man is feeling the same way she is beginning to feel about the relationship. And because she is becoming more emotionally involved, she expects him to want to make a deeper commitment to the relationship……


But to the man, it’s still just sex.


Play or be Played

~*Tariq Nasheed

It's so true!!

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-5-2012

"We go into a relationship in search of somebody who wants the same things we want. We want somebody who likes the same things we like. We want somebody who is going in the same direction we are going. Someplace in the back of our minds, we believe if there is someone else out there like me, that means I can’t be all that bad. Without realizing it, we go out looking for ourselves, believing that if we can find ourselves we will be happy. The thing is, we don’t always like who we are because we have forgotten the truth. We think we need to be fixed – not healed, but fixed. There is a big difference. Consequently, when we see ourselves in other people, in our partners, in our family members, in our friends, we get busy fixing them rather than healing ourselves. There is also the issue of balance. Love wants us to heal our concept of balance and wholeness.

The universal principle of polarity that explains the concept of balance states that everything is dual. Everything has poles. Everything has its pair of complementary opposites. Like and unlike are identical in nature, different in degree. Extremes meet. Balance is having two different things on opposite sides of the scale that look different and act different, but are in fact extremes of the same thing. For example, if you are always on time, you will most probably attract somebody who doesn’t own a watch, who can never get anywhere on time. We are talking here about a person who cannot pee on time! That’s balance. If you look at the universal laws, what you have is light and dark, up and down, good and bad, male and female. They are all complementary. They all lend to wholeness and completion.

If you have somebody on one end of the scale who wants to make love three times a day, and somebody on the other end of the scale who wants to make love three times a day, these two people could kill themselves! They would never get anything done. Balance requires that a person on one side of the scale is going to be the person who loves sex, wants it three times a day, and on the opposite end of the scale will be somebody who thinks sex is horrifying and that you should use it only for the purpose of procreation. The lesson here is acceptance, tolerance, and harmony. Don’t believe that because you like sex or don’t like sex there is something wrong with you. Clean out your closet of inadequacy and fear. Learn to work together. That is what love is about. Do not attempt to create a carbon of copy yourself. That is not balance.

We keep looking for sameness when healing requires tolerance, acceptance, and unconditional love of complementary difference. If the on-time person marries a person who is always late, they get an opportunity to teach and heal each other. The on-time person gets the opportunity to teach, “Hey, you gotta be responsible! You gotta be accountable! You have to be honorable and respectful of other people’s time!” The person who is always late teaches “ Look, you’ve gotta be loose because life is too short! Don’t make yourself crazy! You’ll get there when you get there!” The two of them working together can come up with some reasonable facsimile of, “We are gonna make an effort to get there on time, but if we don’t we’re not gonna kill each other! I’m not gonna beat you up! You’re not gonna be angry! I’m not gonna stop speaking to you! You’re not gonna sell my firstborn!” Both sides teaching, both sides learning create the healing and balance required for unconditional love. Sameness does not heal. It allows us to hide the things we think and feel about ourselves in the closet."

In The Meantime

~*Iyanla Vanzant

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-6-2012

"Your whole life revolves around your job. You wake up, get ready for work, go to work, watch the clock all day, get off work, come home, eat dinner, get prepared for work the next day, go to sleep, wake up, and start all over again. What in the hell kind of life is that?!?! It’s the life of a slave.

You are a corporate slave, and the educational system "certifies" what level of slave you will be. The educational system and schools are slave training centers that determine what plantation you will eventually serve at. If you have a high school degree, you work in the "fields", and if you have a college degree, you work in the "house".

Yes, that is right back to the "house-nikka" and the "field-nikka". And the "house-nikka" still thinks he is better than that "field-nikka", just because "Massa Harvard" or "Massa Yale" put a gold star on his house-nikka forehead. The gold star says PHD, or whatever type of certified nikka you may be.

Whenever you are laboring or working day and night for the benefit of somebody else’s Nation, you are a slave. Even those of you making over $100,000 dollars a year are slaves. If your boss can afford to play your black-ass that amount of money, how much do you think he is paying himself, fool?!? If you’re getting paid a million, he is making a billion off of your talents and services. Don’t be fooled!

You living in somebody else’s house. And if they decided to stop giving you an allowance, for your chores, and kicked you out of their house, you would fall flat on your butt. This is us. Modern day slaves dependent upon "massa" for our survival.

This modern day educational system is a preparatory plantation system. You are trained to think within a certain mind-set. You are made and molded into the image of a "marketable slave". You have to fit the standards that are set-up by the top corporate slave owners. The preparatory plantation (university or college) grade you according to how well you fit the mold. They want to see how well you follow directions, and they want to test your loyalty.

You were trained and tested and tested. They teach you how to memorize, so that you can memorize the directions and orders that will be giving to you in corporate America. After your training is complete on the slave-campus, you are stamped with a certain slave-certification.

If you qualify, you may get a chance to serve at some of the top plantations in the country. But if you get lower grading from your preparatory plantation, you will probably be moving from plantation to plantation throughout your life. You just take the piece of paper, that your "training massa" gave you, and show it to the "massas" at the other plantations. They might let you work at their plantation, if the "training massa" said that you were good enough. This is true. Don’t try to deny the truth. This is you. This is me. This is us.

Wake up, do for self! Don’t be left out in the cold, when these people finally decide to stop giving you and me an allowance. When you go to these universities and colleges, understand that you are receiving a certification. Independently seek out your own education.

Any man that controls the mental input of your mind’s information controls the total sphere of your thinking. Don’t fall prey to the tricknology. Accept your own and be yourself! Accept-your-own-and-be-yourself!

Think about it."

From nikkas To Gods Part 1

~*Akil

[ame=http://youtu.be/5jvH4SHEZUM]Higher Learning - YouTube[/ame]


A pawn, like everybody else......

 

[SafeForWork]

I hate smart women.

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-13-2012

"To laugh is to risk appearing the fool,
To weep is to risk being called sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk showing your true self.
To place your ideas and your dreams before the crowd is to risk being called naive.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest risk in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom.

Only the person who risks is truly free."

~* Janet Rand

 

[Nemesis]

"never trust a big butt and a smile"
~Bell Biv Devoe 1990

 

[Nemesis]

B.I.G.G.I.E A.K.A B.I.G get it BIGGIE
~notorious B.I.G 1994

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-18-2012

"To the fearful eye, all is threatening. When you look toward the world in a fearful way, all you see and concentrate on are things that can damage and threaten you. The fearful eye is always besieged by threat.

To the greedy eye, everything can be possessed. Greed is one of the powerful forces in the modern Western world. It is sad that a greedy person can never enjoy what they have, because they are always haunted by that which they do not yet possess. This can refer to land, books, companies, ideas, money or art. Joy is possession, but sadly possession is ever restless; it has an inner insatiable hunger. Greed is poignant because it is always haunted and emptied by future possibility; it can never engage presence. However, the more sinister aspect of greed is its ability to sedate and extinguish desire. It destroys the natural innocence of desire, dismantles its horizons, and replaces them with a driven and atrophied possessiveness. This greed is now poisoning the earth and impoverishing its people. Having has become the sinister enemy of being.

To the judgmental eye, everything is closed in definitive frames. When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of lines and squares. It is always excluding and separating, and therefore it never sees in a compassionate or celebratory way. To see is to judge. Sadly, the judgmental eye is always equally harsh with itself. It sees only the images of its tormented interiority projected outward from itself. The judgmental eye harvests the reflected surface and calls it truth. It enjoys neither the forgiveness nor the imagination to see deeper into the ground of things where truth is paradox. An externalist, image-driven culture is the corollary of such an ideology of facile judgment.

To the resentful eye, everything is begrudged. People who have allowed the canker of resentment into their vision can never enjoy who they are or what they have. They are always looking out toward others with resentment. Perhaps they are resentful because they see others as more beautiful, more gifted, or richer than themselves. The resentful eye lives out of its poverty and forgets its own inner harvest.

To the indifferent eye, nothing calls or awakens. Indifference is one of the hallmarks of our times. It is said that indifference is necessary for power; to hold control one has to be successfully indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under control. Thus indifference calls for a great commitment to non vision. To ignore things demands incredible mental energy. Without even knowing it, indifference can place you beyond the frontiers of compassion, healing, and love. When you become indifferent you give all your power away. Your imagination becomes fixated in the limbo of cynicism and despair.

To the inferior eye, everyone else is greater. Others are more beautiful more brilliant, and gifted than you. The inferior eye is always looking away from its own treasures. It can never celebrate its own presence and potential. The inferior eye is blind to its secret beauty. The human eye was never designed to look up in a way that inflates the Other to superiority, nor to look down, reducing the Other in inferiority. To look someone in the eye is a nice testament to truth, courage and expectation. Each on stands on common, but different, ground.

To the loving eye, everything is real. This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive. Such love is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration and reality. Kathleen Raine, a Scottish poet, says that unless you see things in the light of love, you do not see it at all. Love is the light in which we see light. Love is the light in which we see each thing in its true origin, nature and destiny. If we look at the world in a loving way, then the world would rise up before us full of invitation, possibility, and depth.

The loving eye can even coax pain, hurt and violence toward transfiguration and renewal. The loving eye is bright because it is autonomous and free. It can look lovingly upon anything. The loving vision does not become entangled in the agenda of power, seduction, opposition or complicity. Such vision is creative and subversive. It rises above the pathetic arithmetic of blame and judgment and engages in experience at the level of its origin, structure and destiny. The loving eye sees through and beyond image and effects the deepest change. Vision is central to your presence and creativity. To recognize how you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures your life secretly holds."

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

~*John O'Donohue

 

[concise]

If art theory could be content with that, if it could be satisfied with the rewards afforded by honest searching, then one could not object to it. But it is more ambitious. It is not content to be merely the attempt to find laws; it professes to have found the eternal laws. It observes a number of phenomena, classifies them according to some characteristics, and then derives laws from them. That is of course correct procedure, because unfortunately there is hardly any other way. But now begins the error. For it is falsely concluded that these laws, since apparently correct with regard to the phenomena previously observed, must then hold true for all future phenomena as well. And, what is most disastrous of all, it is then the belief that a yardstick has been found to measure artistic worth, even that of future works. As often as the theorists have been disavowed by reality, whenever they declared something to be inartistic 'which did not with their rules agree', they still 'cannot forsake their madness'. For what would they be if they did not at least have a lease on Beauty, since art itself does not belong to them? What would they be if it were to become clear to everyone, for all time, what is being shown here once again? What would they be, since, in reality, art propagates itself through works of art and not through aesthetic laws? Would there really be any distinction, in their favor, between themselves and a master carpenter?


Someone could argue that I am going too far, that nowadays, as everybody knows, aesthetics does not prescribe laws of Beauty but merely attempts to infer their existence from the effects of art. Quite correct: almost everybody does know that nowadays. Yet hardly anyone takes it into consideration. And that is just the point. Let me illustrate. In this book I believe I have succeeded in refuting some old prejudices of musical aesthetics. That these prejudices have remained with us right up to the present would in itself be proof enough of my contention. But when I say what it is that I do not consider a necessity of art; when I say: tonality is no natural law of music, eternally valid - then it is plain for everyone to see how the theorists spring up in indignation to cast their veto against my integrity. Who today would want to admit that [my statement about tonality is true] even if I proved it still more incisively than I shall do here?


The power that the theorist has to have to fortify untenable position comes from his alliance with aesthetics. Now aesthetics deals only with the eternal things, thus always comes too late in life. People call that 'conservative'. But this is just as absurd as a conservative express train. The advantages that aesthetics assures the theorist are too great, however, for him to worry about this absurdity. There is so little grandeur in the sound of it, if the teacher tells the pupil: One of the most gratifying means for producing musical form is tonality. What a different impression it makes, though, if he speaks of the principle of tonality, as of a law - 'Thou shalt...' - adherence to which shall be indispensable to all musical form. This word 'indispensable' - one can detect a whiff of eternity! Dare to feel otherwise, young artist, and you will have them all against you, those who claim that I am merely saying what everybody knows. And they will call you 'disgusting pretender' and 'charlatan' and will slander you: 'You fake! You thought you could put something over on us!' And when they have finished smearing you with their vulgarity, they will pose as those courageous men who would have thought it cowardly not to risk something in behalf of their views - something, that is, which only hurts the other. And in the end you are the clod!


To hell with all these theories, if they always serve only to block the evolution of art and if their positive achievement consists in nothing more than helping those who will compose badly anyway to learn it quickly.


What one could reasonably expect of them [the theorists], they do not fulfill. The form in which they practice aesthetics is indeed extremely primitive. It does not amount to much more than some pretty talk; yet the main thing the theorists have borrowed from aesthetics is the method of apodictic assertions and judgments. It is asserted, for example: 'That sounds good or bad' [beautiful or not beautiful would be more correct and forthright]. That assertion is first of all presumptuous; secondly though, it is an aesthetic judgment. If it is put forward unsupported, why then should we believe it? Should we trust in the authority of the theorist? Why then? If he offers no support for what he says, it is then either just something that he knows [that is, not what he himself has discovered, but rather what he has learned (secondhand)], or what all believe because it is experienced by all. Yet, beauty is not something in the common experience of all, rather, at most, in the experience of individuals. Above all, however, if that sort of judgment could be accepted without further justification, then the justification would have to follow so necessarily from the system itself that to mention it would be superfluous. And here we have hit the theorists' most vulnerable spot: Their theories are intended to serve as practical aesthetics; they are intended to influence the sense of beauty in such a way that it will produce, for example, harmonic progressions whose effect can be regarded as beautiful; they are intended to justify the exclusion of those sounds and progressions that are esteemed not beautiful. But these theories are not so constructed that the aesthetic judgment follows as a consequence of their first principles, of the logical development of these principles! On the contrary, there is no coherence, absolutely no coherence. These judgments, 'beautiful' or 'not beautiful', are entirely gratuitous excursions into aesthetics and have nothing to do with the logic of the whole. Parallel fifths sound bad (why?). This passing note sounds harsh (why?). There are no such things as ninth chords, or they sound harsh (why?). Where in the system can we find logical, mutually consistent answers to these three 'why's? In the sense of beauty? What is that? How is the sense of beauty otherwise related to this system? To this system - if you please!!


Theory of Harmony
Arnold Schoenberg

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-20-2012

"Journalists, politicians, and other opinion leaders foster fears about particular groups of people both by what they play up and what they play down. Consider Americans' fear of black men. These are perpetuated by the excessive attention paid to dangers that a small percentage of African-American men create for other people, and by a relative lack of attention to dangers that a majority of black men face themselves.

The dangers to black men recede from public view whenever people paint color-blind pictures of hazards that particularly threaten African-American men: discussion of disease trends that fail to mention that black men are four times more like to be infected with the AIDS virus and twice as likely to suffer from prostate cancer and heart disease than are white men; reports about upturns in teen suicide rates that neglect to not evidence that rates for white males crept up only 22 percent between 1980 and 1995 while the rate for black males jumped 146 percent; or explorations of the gap between what middle class Americans earn and the expenses of maintaining middle-class lifestyle that fail to point out that the problem is more acute for black men. (College-educated black men earn only as much as white men with high school diplomas.)

The most egregious omissions occur in the coverage of crime. Many more black men are casualties of crime than are perpetrators, but their victimization does not attract the media spotlight the way their crimes do. Thanks to profuse coverage of violent crime on local TV news programs, "night after night, black men rob, rape, loot, and pillage in the living room," Caryl Rivers, a journalism instruction at Boston University, has remarked. Scores of studies document that when it comes to victims of crime, however, the media pay disproportionately more attention to whites and women.

David Krajicek, a journalism instruction at Columbia University, recalls a term that he and his editor used when he worked as a crime reporter for the New York Daily News in the 1980s. The term was unblees- unidentified black males. "Unbless," Krajicek notes, "rarely rated a story unless three or four turned up at the same location. We paid little attention to these routine murders because the police paid little attention.

Police inattention is one of several factors that journalists accurately cite account for why white crime victims receive more media attention than black victims. Journalists also cite complaints from African-American leaders about the press paying too much attention to problems and pathologies in the black communities. But are crime victims the best candidates to overlook in the service of more positive coverage? A host of studies indicate that by downplaying the suffering of victims and their families the media do a disservice to minority neighborhoods where those victims live. Criminologists have documented that the amount of coverage a crime receives affects how much attention police devote to the case and the willingness of prosecutors to accept plea bargains. As a rule, the more coverage, the more likely that an assailant will be kept behind bars, unable to do further harm to the victim or community. In addition, when a neighborhood's crime victims are portrayed as victims - sympathetically and without blame, as humans rather than as statistics - people living in other parts of the city are more inclined to support improved social services for the area, which in turn can reduce crime rate.

Underreporting of black victims also has the effect of making white victims appear more ubiquitous than they are, thereby fueling whites fears of black criminals, something that benefits neither race. Helen Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, has documented that rapes of white women by black men - which constitute a tiny proportion of all rapes - receive considerable media attention. In a separate study of women's concerns about crime Esther Madriz, a sociology professor at Hunter College, discovered that stories in the news media "reinforce a vision of society in which black men are foremost among women's fears."

Another explanation journalists and editors give for their relative neglect of black victims might be called the Journalism 101 defense. Those of use who took an introductory journalism course in college remember the teacher pounding into our cerebrums the famous dictate attributed by John Bogart, city editor of the New York Sun in the 1880s: "When a dog bites a man that is not news, when a man bites a dog, that is news." Everyone expects black crime victims, the argument goes, so their plight isn't newsworthy. Here is how a write for the Los Angeles Times, Scott Harris, characterized the thoughts that go through reporters' and editors' minds as they ponder how much attention, if any, to accord to a city's latest homicide: "Another 15-year-old shot to death? Ho hum. Was he an innocent bystander? What part of town? Any white people involved?

As heartless and bigoted as this reasoning may sound, actually there would be nothing objectionable about it if news organizations applied the man-bites-dog principle universally. Obviously they do not; otherwise, there would never be stories about crimes committed by black men, since no one considers black perpetrators novel or unexpected."

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

~*Barry Glassner

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-23-2012

"It is generally conceded that even a monarchy or a dictatorship is an oligarchy, or a government run by a small, ruling minority. Every monarchy has its small circle of advisors, who allow the king or dictator to rule as long as he does so in a manner pleasing to the oligarchy. It is doubtful that there has even been a true dictatorship (rule by one person) anywhere in the world, except in some isolated instances, such as in a tribe or in a clan.

Such is also the case with democracy, for this form of government is traditionally controlled at the top by a small ruling oligarchy. The people in a democracy are conditioned to believe that they are indeed the decision making power in the government, but in truth there is almost always a small circle at the top making the decisions for the entirety. So the only true form of government throughout history has been the oligarchy, a rule by a minority.

As proof of these contentions, one has only to read the 1928 United States Army Training Manual, which defined a democracy as:

"A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting of any form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy, attitude toward property is communistic - negating property rights.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequence.

Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

A democracy, according to this definition, is actually controlled by a demagogue, defined as: "A speaker who seeks to make capital of social discontent and gain political influence."

So demagogues are usually hired by those supporting an oligarchy as a form of government to create the anarchy or social discontent that the oligarchs convert into true oligarchy. Democracies are converted to anarchy, where no one rules, as the oligarchs seek to control the government themselves. And anarchy ends with a dictatorship or a tyrannical form of government when the oligarchy imposes control over all of the people.

The 1928 definition of democracy was later changed by those who write army manuals, however.

In 1952, this became the definition of democracy in the Soldier's Guide:

Because the United States is a democracy, the majority of the people decide how our government will be organized and run - and that includes the Army, Navy and Air Force, The people do this by electing representatives, and these men and women then carry out the wishes of the people.

(This is a strange definition to offer the American fighting man: that democratic policies manage the Armed Services. It is doubtful that enlisted men elect their officers or make decisions as to how conduct the war.)

So if democracies are in truth oligarchies, where the minority rules, is there a form of government that protects both minority and majority rights?"

The Unseen Hand: An Introduction to the Conspiratorial View of History

~*A. Ralph Epperson

 

[concise]

on the corner of 135th and Lenox



What is a ******? Who is a ******? Can anyone be a ******? The answers to these questions vary depending on who you are speaking to. When I was a child growing up in Harlem in the 1970s we were taught that a ****** was a low down and uncouth person. I later heard many other definitions for the term ****** that attempted to make being a ****** synonymous with being Black. Like most people it was clear to me that when the term ****** was directed at a Black person by a White person it was a term of hate that was demeaning to any self-respecting Black person. The best definition I have ever heard for the term ****** is as follows: a ****** is a hater of self and kind! ...

The term ****** has never enjoyed such popular use as it enjoys today within the Black community and in Black culture since it was first used on an African slave. This ******, that ******, smart ******, dumb ******, rich ******, poor ******, fat ******, skinny ******, Black ******, yellow ******, bytch-ass ******, mother fukking ****** and my ****** all find daily popular use in the Black community. More diabolical still is the use of terms derived from ****** like "nikka," which are used as terms of affection among our young people. So called hip hop music and culture embrace the use of the term ****** and derivatives of the term. The problem with this is that notwithstanding the creative attempt by many of us to take away the sinister nature of the word ****** and turn it around, we neglect to remember that words have connotations that don't disappear even if we attempt to redefine them. The attempt at changing the term ****** from its original meaning to something positive has been a failure. First our people have been spoiled by the success we have had in changing the meaning of words like "bad" so that it could mean good. We were so successful that White people began to follow us. When Michael Jackson released the hit album entitled "Bad", ebonics crossed over to mainstream America. At White social gatherings everywhere White people could be heard singing "You know I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it," etc. Many other terms have been tampered with by so-called ebonics that probably should have been left alone. Consider the attempt at the transformation of the term "bytch."

A bytch is defined as a female dog. I grew up understanding that it was a term that was a great insult when directed at a woman. Today, I often hear young women refer to themselves and other women as bytches, particularly in the Black community. They say things like "I'm a smart bytch, "I'm a rich bytch," "She's an ugly bytch," and the increasingly popular "I be that ride or die bytch."

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but bytch will in my mind never be an appropriate term for a Black woman because it will always carry a negative and hateful connotation that reflects not only on the woman it is directed at but also her children. So I am keeping it real by asking any woman what man she thinks really values and respects her and the children she may already have or plan to have for him if she sees her as a "bytch"?

Many of our Black young men have taken to calling themselves "dogs." This is a problem when you consider the alarming abandonment of responsibility to Black children by the majority of our Black fathers. If a man tells a woman in any way that he is a dog he is informing her that he is only capable of indiscriminate breeding or sexual expression without concern for responsibilities that could arise from her emotional involvement with him or from any offspring that might result. bytches should lie with dogs. Men should lie with women - that's keeping it real.


Towards the Destruction of a ****** Mentality
C.C. Blackman

 

[KnowledgeIsQueen]

7-27-2012

"We have some serious issues with identity. We’re so screwed up on who and what we are, we let other people define us. Black people have been called everything from c00n, darkie, and porch monkey to jigaboo, tarbaby, and some other names that I don’t even understand. Hispanics were spics, wetbacks, or mud people, depending on where you came from. Asians were dotheads, gooks, chinks, or towelheads, also depending on where you came from.

These names were intended to dehumanize us. By addressing us as less than a man, we were made to feel subhuman, or less than human. However, you only give a name power when you respond to it. And there’s no name in history that has acquired more power than any other.
That’s right. nikka

At some point during slavery, Blacks adopted the use of the word nikka to take the sting off it. Basically, it meant less when whites said it because Black people could use it as well. So nikka (which the southern whites would sometimes say as "nikkah") became a powerful word in the Black community.

And over time, we forgot about its origins and its purpose. And it became standard. The problem isn’t that we use a word with a fukked up past. It’s how we think. And it’s not just us. It’s everyone who has been made to feel subhuman. There are Mexicans who call themselves wetbacks. There are women who call themselves and each other bytches. But it’s not everyone!


As Ludacris’s character said in Crash:

It’s just Black people demeaning other Black people, using that word over and over. You ever hear white people callin’ each other "honky" all the time? "Hey, honky, how’s work?" "Not bad, cracker, we’re diversifying!"


Makes you think about how we see ourselves, huh?


Here are some of the things we call ourselves and each other…and why.

Animals: We call each other by every LOWLY member of the animal kingdom out there (cat, dog, snake, rat, bytch, monkey, bird, duck, pigeon, pig, hog, chick, etc.) Are we really subhuman? Who was the first person to call us animals? Think about it.

Pimp: What’s funny about this word is that most dudes who call themselves pimps are actually considered "tricks" in the pimp game. Sleeping with six different girls does not make you a pimp, especially if you’re breaking bread to do so. Most real pimps don’t even deal with their girls sexually. A pimp is a man in control of himself and his finances. That eliminates 90% of the young boys claiming to "pimp" nowadays, huh?

Thug: Before Tupac, a thug was another word for a goon. A mindless muscle, especially in criminal endeavors. Now it’s a lifestyle. See, if everyone who was a thug, goon, or gangsta had something that was really worth fighting for and killing for, I wouldn’t say shyt. Tupac’s definition of thug described a Black man who was willing to fight for what he believed in, not just an ignorant dude willing to kill another black man behind a little bit of money.

Goon: People been saying this word pretty heavy every since Plies hit the scene. Gradually, the word "goon" is becoming the new "thug". In the same way, it was originally a word for dumb criminal muscle, basically a guy who does the dirty work for the smart guy who’s really running the operation. Wow, that’s really shooting for the stars, huh? If you have to use a word you heard from someone else, at least have the aspirations to call yourself a fukking boss, not a fukking worker!

Boy: That’s your boy, huh? Read the isis Papers by Francis Cress Welsing. Or watch Baby Boy.

Some of us gotta grow up and be men. Think about it…almost every rapper nowadays is "Lil" this or "Young" that. I’m talking about grown men, 30 and up, callin’ themselves by kids’ names. Doesn’t that make you think about how we see ourselves?

Motherfukker: You ever heard of an Oedipus complex? Look it up later. For now, see above. Anyway, the only ones who really f*cked our mothers were the slavemasters raping them. Me personally, I don’t wanna f*ck your mama or mine.

Gangsta: A "gangster" was a mob dude like Al Capone or Lucky Luciano. We supposedly appropriated that image and made it our own. But a gangster is supposed to be someone who controls an operation, not a goon who serves in an operation that is bigger than him. And drugs are bigger than you. It’s CIA big. When you start controlling your own life, and the lives of people around you, that’s gangsta.

Dime, Silver Dolla: Woman think their worth is measured on a monetary scale. Are their looks what determine their value? And is that how they’re gon’ measure it? In monetary terms? That tells you a lot about their values. But I guess it kinda makes sense, since most of them "dimes" and "silver dollas" out there would look like rusty nickels if they didn’t spend most of their paychecks on their appearance.

B!tch: A term given to Black women by white men and made popular in the 17th century. She was seen as a sexual being, good for breeding and animalistic pleasures. And they call themselves that because it’s cute. It’s just like n!gger. If a man says "b!tch" it’s a problem. But a woman calls herself "b!tch" and feels good about it.

Diva: It kills me when women call themselves a diva. She don’t sing opera. She’s not a diva. A diva is another word for an "operatic prima donna." (I looked it up) The other meaning of "prima donna" is a temperamental, conceited person. And she’s wearing that like a badge of honor?

The names we call ourselves….."

How to Hustle and Win: A Survival Guide for the Ghetto

~*Supreme Understanding