This post was supposed to be my introduction to the readers of the AfroSpear, and me giving a little background about who I am. But honestly, I don’t even feel like it. I don’t feel like introducing myself, or giving a background about myself, or any of that. I know that all the members of the AfroSpear circle agreed to do that, but right now, I am just not in the mood.
Right at this particular moment in time, I am pissed off at black folks and our inability to unify around common goals. So I want to vent about that. I want to grab every last one of the crabs in this huge barrel called the “Blackosphere” and boil them in a freaking vat. And I think I know what set me off today. It was while reading a post by my man, and fellow AfroSpear blogger, Francis Holland, over at Culture Kitchen; and then seeing the hateful mocking vitriolic response he got from the readers over there. (Check out what one guy named Michael Bouldin wrote) That really pissed me off, and even though the post had long gone stale, I wanted to jump in and defend my man with everything that I have.
But then I thought about it, and I realized, that this is to be expected from those in the majority population. They have no idea what it means to represent for our struggle and the problems that we as black folks face on a daily basis. So being ridiculed by those outside of the AfroSpear I can live with. But what I can’t live with, is when other black folks try to tear down and destroy us by throwing unnecessary ridicule and negative energy our way. ”Oh field you are such a hypocrite, you slam people on your blog every day”.Yeah I know, but you know what; that’s on my blog, and the people I slam are not pretending to have the same goals as I do. They are, in fact, ideological combatants, and they slam me on a daily basis as well. So that is to be expected when ideologies clash in that manner. Here in the AfroSpear we are supposed to be coming together with positive ideas and thoughts to uplift black people all over the world. We should be throwing around ideas and plans that can be implemented in a workable fashion, and can be used by others in a positive way. That is what a “think tank” does, and that is what the framers and organizers here have been trying to do.
I also want to say for the record; that I have been extremely inspired and impressed with the posts that have been coming in so far. They have, for the most part, articulated everything that I mentioned above, and that is encouraging. But those crabs….~take a deep breath field~ Still, I don’t think we can be surprised. We all know that when it comes to organizing and unifying black folks around common causes and goals it can be like “herding cats.”-or should I say crabs- Which is why I am so honored to be a part of this AfroSpear effort. It is such a laudable and admirable endeavor that I feel great pride to be involved with it.
So maybe the next time around I will talk a little bit about who I am. But for now, I will just say that I am glad to be one of the crabs trying to get out of the barrel, and not one of the crabs trying to pull the rest of us back in.
Peace.
awwww Field…. I feel your frustration and disappointment at times bruh! But maybe I’m naive… I believe there are more of “us” like you… crabs trying to get out of the barrel….
Stay Strong!
Field, Asabagna,
The AfroSpear is a powerful vehicle to build upon the capacity of our people to create neighborhood, community and nation-building opportunities. As you know better than I, there has been low-life, many time agents of government, who will attempt to create conflict from within African American movements. I am not attempting to cause paranoia, but the reality is there are people in government who track internet conversations and create diversion in the name of black identities. We have to be extremely vigilant and cautious of people who make noise for noise sake.
Those that would disrupt progressive forward movement and progressive forward thinking need to be treated like snakes. You remember what Harriet Tubman said about snakes, “Never wound a snake; kill it.”
Kill the noise of hateful and mocking morons and let’s move on. We can all get fustrated at time bro, but remember this: We in the AfroSpear/Afrosphere stick together, and have each-others back.
- Peace
AAPPundit
Hi Field & Everyone!
Sometimes I post at Culture Kitchen, but I never go there anymore to read the responses. I know they’re going to be inane and filled with vitriol, so I don’t even waste my time. You’ll notice that I haven’t commented there since . . . since Field told me I was wasting my time.
But, I am having a fairly good time over at MyLeftWing, where MSoC has received my posts well, formatting them to make them look nice and putting up tip jars, even though I try not to write to please others, and so I won’t put up tip jars myself.
Maybe I’ll write one of these introduce yourself columns. But everyone knows what it’ll be about. I’ll give you a clue and a roadmap: “43 consecutive terms.”
But I’ve also got a different rap that I’ve been developing a book about for the past two years, and now I’ve decided to just write and post about it here in the AfroSpear/Afrosphere. I believe that Extreme Color Aroused Disorder (ECA) is a mental illness. Just as we would get no where trying to develop sociological solutions to the problem of schizophrenia without the help of psychiatrists, I believe we will not achieve the success we could fighting exteme color arousal until we insist that America acknowledge, diagnose and treat it as the mental illness that it obviously (to me) is.
Let’s see: Symptoms of Extreme Color Arousal include paranoia (the Black men are after my daughter); obsessive compulsive behaviors (separate bathrooms, redlining); hyper-vigilance (enforcement of segregation, even today in whites-only schools, movies casts and television shows); anti-social behavior and lack of empathy (genocide in Iraq, callous disregard for suffering in New Orleans); and delusions (Blacks are a separate “race). I’m sure the rest of you can come up with at least a hundred more symptoms that can be found as symptoms of other recognized mental illnesses listed in the DSM-IV.
Now, why do I call this Extreme Color Arousal (ECA) (EE-cah) instead of racism? Well, the word “racism” is based on the fallacious premise that we are from a different “race,” like dogs. Since I do not and will never accept the premise of separate and inevitably inequal “races,” I simply refuse ever again to use the fallacious and white supremacist words “race,” “racial,”, “racist,” and “racism.” Please visit plezWord and my blog and read my articles on the topic, to decide for yourselves.
I don’t need the fallacious words that are based on the premise that we are from another species, because I’ve spent the last two years developing more scientific and linguistically appropriate alternatives for myself. For example, when the police see me coming from half a mile and stop me and other blacks at a rate 2 to three times higher than whites, they are not responding to my “race.” The visual cue to which they are responding is simply my “skin-color.”
Since I know they are aroused to stop me as soon as they perceive my skin-color, I know their problem is that they have Extreme Skin-Color-Arousal. Now, something has to be going on in their heads and cognitive behavioral psycologists tell us that “something” is “thoughts” and “emotions” and these thoughts and emotions become manifest in behavior. Extreme behavior, in many cases. When thoughts and emotions manifest in extreme behavior over a period of time, that’s a “disorder.”
Let’s put those components of the problem together and see what we have descriptively: Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior, Disorder (ECEIBD). But if we abbreviate that to Extreme Color Arousal, everyone will eventually know what we are talking about, as long as we make reference to all of the elements that prove our case, which we should always do anyway, lest we be easily accused of imagining or exaggerating things.
When you think about it, this becomes a valid diagnosis, which is good. Because without diagnosis there can be no treatment and no cure.
I know that everyone says there can be no treatment for ECA. How do they know? Isn’t that simply a self-fulfilling and highly convenient profecy? How do we know empirically that ECA is any harder to treat than battered women’s syndrome, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Adult Children of Acoholics Families syndrome, alcoholism and drug addiction?
The simple answer is that since ECA is seen to be a disease whose victims are Black, it isn’t considered to be worth diagnosing and treating. That’s why we have to make it clear to whites that THEY are the victims of ECA as well.
The Federal Government says that, between hate crimes and discrimination complaints, about a million complaints are going through the US Government every years. Some of these complaints represent white people who will be dismissed from their jobs for discrimination, lose wages, be the subject of discrimination suits . . . Others of these complaints are white people becoming the VICTIMS of hate crimes. In both cases, it is in whites people’s best interests to have treatment for this illnesses so that they won’t get themselves into trouble by acting out extreme color-aroused emotion, ideation and behavior disorder.
White corporations are spending and inordinate amount of money defending themselves after workers commit acts of discrimination that add nothing to the bottom line. When workers “go off” and kill co-workers because they are color-aroused or have been the victims of color-aroused abuse, that too is expensive for US corporations.
If the only thing I accomplish in this lifetime is that Extreme Color-aroused Emotion Ideation and Behavior Disorder be recognized as a mental illness, so that workers can be screened for it and receive help before they kill their co-workers, be they Black or white, then I will have done something useful with my time.
Over the last couple of years, I think I have worked out conceptually a number of ways in which this screening could take place and be successful in helping employees and others to deal with this increasingly multicultural world in which we live.
Good morning, everyone!
Some people in the Afrosphere, bless their well-meaning hearts, are asserting that the word “race” may be correct after all, because although Blacks may not be a separate but equal species of humans, it may be scientifically correct to assert that we are a “sub-species” of humans. (If I could remember where I saw this, I would provide a link.) Even if this were so, I will NEVER, EVER, refer to us as a separate “race” or a “separate” sub-species, because it IS NOT IN OUR POLITICAL INTERESTS TO DO SO!
My mother, the late Dr. Rachel V. Holland, who died in 1997, was college professor who taught Sociology for 20 years. She focused on teaching about what was then called “racism,” but is now coming to be called Extreme Color-Arousal.
Throughout her twenty years of teaching, my mother taught me and all of her students this fundamental principle of Black existence in America:
“For hundreds of years, whites have perpetuated an argument that Blacks were from a separate and inferior race for the purpose of justifying our enslavement and segregation. Every argument about what “race” Blacks are from and what are the “inherent biological characteristics” of the “Black race” is a politically-motivated attempt by white people to demean Black people, and so you should NEVER engage in arguments about the genetic content of the Black race.
You cannot win this argument, because as soon as you concede that there is ANY scientific reason to engage in this pseudo-scientific genetic battle, you have already lost the political war.” Whites (and Blacks) will NEVER, EVER believe that a separate Black race in nonetheless equal.
Pardon me for hijacking this thread, but this is on my heart this Sunday morning and I have come to this “church” to talk about it.
So, although biologically we could argue over whether Blacks are perhaps a “sub-species” of humans, it ought to be apparent that that is not our best argument for equality! Language matters. When you concede that you are “sub” you linguistically concede that you are “lower-than” on a hierarchy, even if you could (and will have to) argue for thousands of years that this is not what was intended.
The answer is simple. We must insist that the reason that whites discriminate against us has nothing to do with “race” and everything to do with “skin-color.” This linguistic struggle is as important as insisting that we are Blacks instead of Negroes and Colored. Words matter. Defining ourselves instead of being defined by others matters. The way that we choose to define our struggle with whites matters precisely because we assert the right and the power to define our struggle.
The word “race” is not our definition, it is a white definition that we have passively accepted. To the degree that we have made it our own and let it define us, it is like the slave name that Asabagna rejected when he assumed the name Asabagna. The word “race” is politically analogous to the slave name that Cassius Clay rejected when he insisted on being called “Muhammad Ali.” Muhammad Ali no longer wanted to be defined by the badges of inferiority sub-humanity created for Blacks during the time of slavery. When he insisted on being called Muhammad Ali, it was revolutionary in America, just as insisting on being called “Black people” rather than “the Black race” will be revolutionary awakening for Black people as well as white people.
Muhammad Ali did not become “the greatest” simply by winning in the boxing ring. He became the greatest by insisting on defining his own reality in relation to white American.
If Muhammad Ali had the courage in the 1960′s to abandon a slave name and insist on defining himself and his relation to white people, surely we can find the courage to insist that we are discriminated against because of our “skin-color” and not because of our “race” and “racism.” We can put the locus and focus of this problem back where it belongs – on white people’s Extreme Color Arousal rather than on Black people’s “inferior “racial” characteristics.” In any case, like the name Cassius Clay vs. the name Muhammad Ali, it’s our choice to make.
Thanks for the encouragement and the positive words Asa, and AAPpundit.
Francis, I know I keep saying this, and I have not gotten around to it yet. But I swear I am going to comment soon on your ECA as opposed to racism theory. I find the entire discussion fascinating.
Peace.
This is an excellent comment, Francis. I agree with your reasons for not using the word race, and now I must re-train myself around new language.
Biology is not my field, but I think the statement “although biologically we could argue over whether Blacks are perhaps a “sub-species” of humans” is not accurate because I believe the mapping of the human genome disproved the theory of race. So, in my own gesture of self-making I have stopped calling myself and others black because I see blackness as component in the duality of blackness/whiteness and a perpetuation of the theory of race. Instead I call myself and others in the tribe Diasporans because our ancestors were scattered during the transatlantic slave trade…thank you again for your transformative ideas.