Problems Have Solutions

Bandages are all the rage. Burn? Slap a bandage on it and keep it moving. Cut? What size do you need? Scrape? A little ointment, a bandage, and it's as good as new.

That's how I see the political system in Amerika. While problems have solutions, in most cases, in Amerika, problems become a pissing contest between "contestants," also known as political candidates. Instead of Amerikan's concentrating on checking the content of the pee, they're just satisfied that it looks clear.

Sound gross? Well, it shouldn't. What's uglier in comparison to the pissing contest is Afrikan people fighting over who should be president based on their "pissing" qualities, not their qualifications.

Consider this:

• What contestant has directly addressed the destruction that still exists in the Gulf Coast region and disproportionately affects Afrikan people?
• What contestant has directly addressed the societal relationship and influence on Afrikan-on-Afrikan violence and how society can be reconstructed to prevent it?
• What contestant has directly addressed the fact that Afrikans rank lowest in regards to economic, political and social power due to historical and ongoing oppression and our broad-based inability to form trusting relationships and a true understanding of power?
• What contestant has directly addressed the need for Afrikans to lay out economic, political and social infrastructures of their own, regardless of who is elected president?
• What contestant has directly addressed the fact that politics, to include the voting process, has helped to maintain domination over Afrikans, not afford them justice, liberty and the same freedoms afforded those doing the dominating?

We can truthfully say NONE of them. And why can we say that? Because history has shown us, in no uncertain terms, that we have never received any long-term benefit from politics in Amerika. And anytime we were accorded anything that looked like justice, talked like justice, so it must have been justice, it was only a knife hidden in the undersleeves of an assassin, ready to slit our throats, the moment he got close enough to pull it off.

And we helped that assassin. We helped him in so many ways, I only have space to share a few:

• Financing our own oppression with our consumeristic nature.
• Believing that somebody could love us, when we didn't love ourselves, let alone each other.
• Having an inability to trust each other.
• Leaving our children to be raised by institutional parents (schools, day care, juvenile systems, prisons, jails, foster systems, etc.), while we struggled to achieve $1 to his every $5, thereby considering ourselves a success when compared to our brethren making $.50.
• Leaving our children to be raised by single mothers.
• Shying away from commitments that would have kept the family unit intact.
• As Afrikan women by taking high-paying corporate jobs (part of the assassin's plan to cause disharmony and disruption in the home) and looking down on any man who performed blue-collar labor.
• Eating ourselves to death.
• Drugging ourselves to death.
• Drinking ourselves to death.
• Shooting ourselves to death.
• Begging to be allowed to dine at his tables, sleep in his beds, play in his front yard.

Because of the assistance we have given him, we own nothing in large holdings. If he were to close grocery stores today, we'd starve for lack of knowledge when it comes to tending our own gardens. If he shut down the clothing stores, we'd wear sackcloth for lack of knowledge when it comes to making our own clothes. And heaven forbid there were no more rims, cars painted with Country Time Lemonade themes or Korean-owned beauty supply stores, life just wouldn't be worth living.

We have placed the very value of our lives in the hands of an assassin whose job it is to kill us if he never does anything else in life. And he has found that he doesn't have to kill us physically--not right off anyway--as long as he can kill the spirit residing in us. That's death unto itself.

And, we, Afrikans, give up that power to him with no limitations and no questions asked. We believe that one day, if we love this man enough, more than ourselves, we'll love a heart into him. One day, we'll live in perfect harmony with him singing the Coca Cola song from long ago.

It's time that Afrikans stop living the lie, step out of their perceptual reality and fully engage in the the real world. Doing so will require something we seem to have a hard time delivering on: accountability, unless it is to someone else's benefit and our detriment.

Which brings me to something else: Which of these contestants can you truthfully say have a record of being accountable to you, not just to the Amerikan people, but to you?

If you can't think of any, it's a good possibility you might want to stop checking the color of the pee and evaluate more fully the content of the pee.

Comments

[Safa]

Very interesting post. I agree with your points. However, my problem had always been, what to DO? I realized the place to start is with my home and family. It just seems like we live in (as you say), a virtual reality, and one where no real leader has emerged...not Sharpton, Jackson, etc. I am so not into politics or these candidates. I mean once you get past all the superficial stuff. At times I feel like rare politicians started out with your sentiments and attempted to be accountable. However, I really feel that at some point along the rise to them actually getting a foothold and getting heard, it all transforms to what we see of them today. It's almost a catch-22. In order to move beyond just "talk", you have to navigate a certain way but it's that navigation that destroys your initial purpose.

[JWL Responds]

@ Safa: Your question was so relevant to the Afrikan experience that I felt it deserved more than just a brief response. Instead I have a dedicated a post to it. Thanks so much for taking the time to say what was on your mind, for asking the hard questions. ;-)