Faith in Action

I received a funny text message from one of my best friends on December 30, 2007. In the message, he says that he is going to start a “Wackest 2008 Church Motto” contest. For those not famililar with the church motto practice in the traditional Black church - it goes like this. A preacher looking to excite the congregation toward the end of the year begins thinking about words/phrases that rhyme with the coming year. S/He then jumps at the opportunity to incorporate this phrase in the sermon or throw it across the upcoming church conference banner. Before you know it, members of that church are going around saying this phrase as if it was divine revelation from God while totally discounting the fact that their preacher just created a pseudo-religous nursery rhyme for their quick consumption.

My boy texted me the list of mottos that he feels are coming down the pipe this year. His guesses are:

We’re sure that these will make an appearance this year and sadly many more wack church mottos are yet on the way.

His text did get me to thinking though about a motto that I hope to put into practice this year. It goes: “I must lose excess weight in 2008.” Okay - besides the general “wackness” of the statement, it does speak to something that I am actively doing already on the second day of a new year.

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Last week this time, my wife and I were enjoying a wonderful mid-winter vacation in a part of the world that many would consider “paradise on earth”. 

We were arrested by the scene above while returning from watching the sunrise. 

-A homeless man sleeping on the porch of a church with a single sheet covering his body - arms folded over his chest.

The picture preaches its own sermon.  It causes me to meditate on how many others are sleeping on the outside of the “Beautiful” gates of the church.

By now many of you have heard or seen Michael Richards’ (Kramer from Seinfeld) racist rant at The Laugh Factory in L.A.  While I’m sure it would boost my site visits, I refuse to post the video of what happened on my blog.  It was sheer hatred and revealed to some (and confirmed for many more) that the racist spirit is still vibrant and well.  Feel free to view the video at sites like youtube.com and tmz.com. 

The abbreviated detailed account for those who haven’t seen the video yet is that while performing a stand up comedy bit in L.A.; Michael Richards started getting heckled by at least one African American man.  At some point during the heckling; Richards snaps and says to the heckler, “Shut Up!  Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a [expletive] fork up your [expletive].”  He then proceeds to repeatedly call the man a nigger saying, “Look everyone, there’s a nigger!”  The crowd eventually got up and walked out while Richards slipped off the stage.  Read More

Taylor Branch’s 2nd part of the “King Trilogy” - Pillar of Fire - got off to a disappointing start so I put it down for now and picked up a collection of Steve Biko’s essays entitled I Write What I Like. Of course, I would like that book right? The book is amazing. I beg you - even if you don’t have time to read the whole book - to pick it up and read chapter 6 called “We Blacks”. Biko was bad. Like many of my other heroes, he was harassed, arrested, and eventually killed by the police. He was the face and spirit of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement.

Hopefully, some of you will pick this book up. Perhaps even some young people out there will dare to put down William Shakespeare, Of Mice & Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird and pick up this powerful book that does more to stimulate the mind to consciousness and the body to action.

I also hope that all of you are enjoying the videos that I post on the side. I find them to be very educational and inspirational. We really do have to fight to feed our minds and spirits that which will encourage growth. Corporate media, state sanctioned education (read conditioning) and government sponsored religion serves to repress the greatest abilities of the mind all the while lulling the masses to sleep. Our children are shaped and molded to be cogs in the wheel of their own destruction. If they do question their surroundings, many of them lack the strength to challenge cowardly adults who answer, “That’s just the way it is”. This may be the way it is, but this doesn’t have to be the way it will always be. For the past century, it has been the youth who have lead the way or infused revolutionary movements around the world. I have little confidence in adults and their system. The White Power Structure (notice I didn’t say White People) is a vicious animal that will only be defeated by the organized power and directed energy of a passionate legion of true citizens. For I believe to be a full “citizen” one must devote time, energy, and resources toward the improvement of society.

Black Panther and Political Prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, speaks about the youth and the society that rejects them in this week’s featured video. Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

I am a proponent for reparations being delivered to people of African descent in America. The foundation of this country was built on the blood, sweat, and tears of my people. America prospered exponentially because of the free labor forced upon my ancestors. American propaganda paints this country as the beacon of freedom, democracy, and equality, but research will prove otherwise. Though my formalized education attempted to tell me who “American Heroes” were, I learned that their heroes were villains toward my people.

George Washington = slaveowner

Thomas Jefferson = slaveowner and rapist (He repeatedly raped African sister, Sally Hemmings who by the very nature of slavery could not deny consent to sexual advances so how could she give it?)

Abraham Lincoln = opportunist who clearly stated his position against liberation for enslaved Africans (Read Forced Into Glory by Lerone Bennett, Jr. ) and only delivered the Emancipation Proclamation as a military strategy to weaken the Confederate states and their army. Lincoln had no jurisdiction in the South so his proclamation was really moot. Though he had authority in the North, he refused to free enslaved Africans within the document.

Bill Clinton = Though celebrated among many of a darker hue as the “first Black president”; remember that Clinton was the president that turned his head when genocide in Rwanda was unfolding.

Ronald Reagan = though raised up as a hero after death, African people suffered mightily under Reagan. Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act and opposed sanctions against South Africa for its apartheid practices. Old Ron didn’t even want to make Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday for goodness sake. Just vicious.

George Bush (both of them) = um….I don’t have the time.

Anyway - you get the point. State supported American history is “HIS STORY”. In the words of a Kenyan proverb “Until lions have historians, hunters will be heroes.”

Reparations will begin the process of “repairing” the offenses of the distant and not so distant past so that the citizens of this country can move to a brighter today and tomorrow. For those wishing to do more research on reparations, read a book by Morgan State University’s own, Dr. Raymond Winbush entitled Should America Pay? and buy this book from a Black bookstore. Empower Us.

Slavery reparations effort continues to gain ground - baltimoresun.com