You know, for a very long time I’ve tried to ignore the Birthers who started what appears to be a tar and feather campaign to smear President Obama since early 2008. I dismissed the Birthers as bunch of closet white supremacist cranks who would rather see the country led by Howard the Duck then a Black president. I figured they’d pause because the man is half white. However, the “one drop” rule nullified any possibility of getting good with the good ole boy (and girls) network.

Some may dismiss the Birthers as a fringe movement of the country that don’t hold any power and are just leftover DNA from the evolutionary soup that remained in it’s primitive state since the dawn of man. However, their numbers are nothing to laugh at. There about 55 million registered Republicans and I’m going to assume that the 14% of Americans that believe Obama was not born in the USA are mostly Republican. However you slice it, this is by far not a fringe movement.

I watched the Obama “submitting his long form birth certificate” press conference (i.e. black tax) and although he carried a dignified response you could can see the pain of disappointment on his face. The pain of being treated like a nigga after Columbia, Harvard, and being president of the one of the most powerful countries in the world. This is the worse type of racism—the cloaked kind. The type of racism that carries an invisible white hood. The type of racism that when decoded, carries 128 bit decrypted noose. The type of racism that lives in the back room of dusty bars and dinner tables. I find this particular brand of encoded hatred detestable. Personally I will continue my verbal assault on the Birthers because what they stand for is a throw back to the Jim Crow brand of white privilege that we, as a country, have so ardently tried to remove from the hearts of millions.

Before i get started, I created the image on the left myself, but I jacked this idea from Cafe Press. Just want to give props to those who deserve it. Creative capital is just important. One other very important point. The intent of this post is not to shame anyone. These are ideas and resources that I have accumulated over the last 15 years of my life, and were extremely helpful in my personal development. My intention is to spread useful information. Okay, now lets get started.

Over the last 10 years of my life I have seen a slew of “Black Leadership Forums” (BLF) or Black Agenda Forums (BAF) come and go. By far the “Bentley” of BLFs has been Tavis Smiley’s State of the Black Union or Round table. Although there has been recent pull back as people from the black community have questioned the “intentions” of his forums, nevertheless it has been seen as the “Lets Find Out What’s Happening With Black Folk Nationally” forum in regards to economics, politics, and various social issues. Even MSNBC and CNN have jumped into the BLF frey with their forums and specials. Al Sharpton just had his BLF last year, and the NAACP had one in July of 2010. Nevertheless, I’ve watched most of these forums, often with hope and weariness.

The total GDP of the African-American community makes us the 13th largest economy in the world. That’s right, only 0.6% of planet earth (African Americans) represents the 13th largest economy in the world. The African American/Black Market profile from the Magazine Publishers of America has slated the purchasing power of African Americans to hit the 1 trillion dollar mark by 2012. Now that’s not to say that all is well, but we clearly have something to work with.

I will break up this post into 5 parts. My hope is that I will be able to finish this before the end of Black History Month 2011. The first part (what you are reading now) is an explanation of my intent and what topics my fictional BLF will contain. In the middle three parts I will explain the the 3 areas that I deem extremely critical to what I will call Black Reconstruction 2.0.. The last part will have resources to every piece of media (books and film) that’s related to this topic. In each area I will list a group of individuals that I believe are the thought leaders who can offer Ideas that lead to solving critical problems, instead of people who give lip service to ideas that go nowhere. These are critical thinkers who continue to think outside of the box while not falling into the “arrogant trap” of their own egos and personal accomplishments. Bless those individuals who taken the time, effort, and necessary sacrifices to live by the creed of “each one teach one” and “am I my brother’s keeper”. Often said by many, but seldom done.

So lets get down to the nitty-gritty on what would my BLF look like, who would be there and what my agenda would be?

To set the stage of my fictional BLF, I would not have a BLF until I actually owned the building where the conference/forum would happen. What is the point of giving lip service to “being independent”, where you have to pay others to have a conversation about “being independent”. In addition to that, the hotel and related eateries would have have to be owned by me. If this option was not financially feasible, I would have each speaker give a 1-2 hour explanation on the topic via video stream and providing resources (books, articles, websites, etc) that detail the presentation they just gave. I would more than likely opt for this virtual option, because asking people to fly all over the world and drive to your event is a waste of time, money and resources that can be better spent toward the actual conference itself. All these hotel fees, gas, food, and travel time is a waste. No audience, no grand standing, no ham-bonin’, and definitely no moon shinin’. Stop showing your teeth!. This is “straight up” information that you can use. Raw and uncut.

There are three sections to my BLF and they are following:

1. Don’t Believe the Hype. Healing comes first.
Without the proper spiritual and mental healing, the next 3 parts of this post won’t mean much. This is about cleaning the mind, body and soul of all the toxic psychological and lifestyle impurities that divert us from greatness. So many of us talk about being powerful and independent but forget about having the proper dignity, candor, and humanity about themselves and the world around them. Not to mention being extremely humble about our accomplishments and fortune. In this section I will have a select group of doctors (some) who I believe have experience in helping folks remove the self-hatred, spiritually deadening and self-defeating attitude that undermines our future. They are the following:

2. Use History as Guide to Help Your Present Situation
One of the biggest issues I see in our communities (not that these issues are exclusive to our communities) is an unwillingness to immerse ourselves in the necessary information to help us address our present problems. I have seen this at all class levels, from the poorest of the poor to the the so-called “talented 10th”. There are so many lessons from past events that serve as a guide for the future, that we often have circular conversations on problems that have already been solved. In this section the participants will give us a brief history in the following areas. Each speaker will be given 2 hours, then provide the necessary resources to help break-down their 2 hour presentation. Now some of the individuals I’ve mentioned have passed on, so I would play certain films and have a panel discussion after to talk about the film:

3. Talk is Cheap. Action Speaks Louder than Getting on Your Soapbox and Doing Absolutely Nothing
One thing I realize about people, is they like to talk. It’s so easy, just open your trap and stuff starts coming out. To be honest, if we got charged a financial penalty every time we said erroneous, propagandized, or unusable information you’d probably hear a couple thousand people talk on television around the globe. Unfortunately, we have a sea of information that does not maximize our spiritual or human capital. Most of it is junk-food nonsense that gets regurgitated over an over again. Like the way a fly eats it’s food. It has to take in food, vomit on it, then slurp it back up. Do you really want to eat like that? Well chances are, you are. They have repackaged, dyed it, seasoned it with fragrances, and sold you something that appears useful, but is as efficient as Ford Model T racing in the Indianapolis 500.

This last segment of my fictional BLF is very important. These individuals will give you the tools. You’ll actually get the hammers, and wrenches to get to work. The first two segments focus on actionable data. This segment focuses on the tools that you need to take advantage of that data. Although this list could reach well over a thousand, I have specifically picked these individuals based on their willingness to be prudent and forthright in their approach to business, socio-economic circumstances, and human enlightenment. Here is the group that would master this segment:

Well folks, that’s it. The following 3 parts will delve into why I believe that each of these individuals offers something that we can benefit from while explaining why they are experts for each segment. The last part (part 5) will be my conclusion on where we are at and where we are going. Look out for the next parts over the next couple of weeks.

I wasn’t going to do a post today, but I was compelled to do a short post because this day will never be what it portrays itself to be. Let me fire one more political shot in the air before folks start enjoying their gluttonous flesh fest and become sedated from the tryptophan.

How we should honor this day:

1. There is nothing thankful or happy about the history that is tethered to this day. We should change the name to Native American History Day and learn about the REAL history of the Native Americans. Not in a contrived way, but out of respect for a nation that was plundered into oblivion.
2. We should encourage people to fast on this day (able-bodied individuals), because there is nothing more disrespectful than hundreds of millions of people stuffing their faces on a day where the Native Americans were methodically murdered and starved to death
3. Black Friday should be a day when people give all the money they were going to spend on being blind consumerists, and donate that money to every Native American reservation in America. Education, housing and various community centers

In the wake of the new maniac and psychopath of the month (i.e Joseph Stack who did a homicide-suicide plane crash into I.R.S. building in a failed attempt to kill hundreds to Faisal Shahzad failed Times Square bombing that could of maimed/killed hundreds, maybe even thousands) who in some twisted sense of righteousness believe that killing innocent civilians equates to some deed of salvation or proper retribution for past misgivings. These characters are some of the more obvious examples. The definition of terrorism is the following:

terrorism, act of terrorism, terrorist act (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear)

Here is my open letter to “The Terrorists”, current and aspiring psychopaths and cowards who might not have thought they “fit the profile”.

Dear Terrorists,(but not limited to)

The “loose cannon” who claim they are Muslim and follow the Quran and Hadiths in Islam who like to blow themselves up (and others) thinking (Allahhualim) that they are going to see Jenna (Heaven). You better go back to the deen of Al-Islam (if you haven’t already blown yourself up) and re-study because your eyes, ears and hearts are sealed with wickedness and the shaytan.
That’s violent terrorism.

Police officers and those in authority in the justice system who beat down and kill civilians mercilessly because you think they are expendable. You have the disease of cognitive dissonance towards those that you’ve concluded have an “otherness” about them which does not fit into your own cultural matrix.
That’s enforcement terrorism. (not to mention xenophobic and prejudice)

The executives and investment houses/banks/firms sitting in their ivory tower embezzling tens of millions and creating questionable investment instruments (money schemes) while undermining the integrity of the financial system. Impoverishing tens of millions for your own selfish benefit.
That’s financial terrorism.

For the murderers and killers who worship gang violence while killing people in your own community including innocent women and children because you want a quick drug profit.
That’s social and urban terrorism.

Those in the halls of Congress (politicians and law makers at the state and federal level) that play up people’s worst fears to usurp power and mislead your constituents with a divide and conquer strategy. Laying in bed with lobbyists and playing both sides of the political coin for your own one dimensional power grab.
That’s political and institutional terrorism.

For the country that goes into other countries claiming (lying) that another country has WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) because so-called intelligent organizations with fancy acronyms “certified the facts” with a faulty threat matrix then mercliessly kills over 150,000 plus innocent civilians (45 9/11s) for almost 10 years while injuring millions then arrogantly occupies the same country creating more violence and misery for the citizens. Or any country that uses occupation as a foundation for foreign policy.
That’s sovereign terrorism.

For the governments and related banks that are in cahoots with one another who indulge in “too big to fail” bailouts and print money like it grows on trees while causing inflation and devaluing the dollar. Not to mention the draconian practice of fractional reserve banking and usury which buries people under so much interest that they are financially impotent.
That’s economic terrorism.

For the racist bigot (and many don’t even know they are and will read this and say, “Oh that’s definitely not me”….well not so fast, it might be you) individual that foolishly claims to believe in God but sympathies with their ethnic, racial, or tribal identity over the inclusive and humanitarian guidelines of all monotheistic ways of life. Now called religion. 
You are a ethnocentric terrorist. (Not to mention a hypocrite)

For the so-called news organizations that are muliti-milllon dollar partisan hack misinformation “non-thinking” tanks that spew misleading, demeaning, information and purposely confuse the public with empty politically inspired anecdotes and regurgitate sound bites from their corporate/ political slave masters.
That’s information terrorism.

If there was anyone who thought any one group of people have cornered the market on “terrorism”, you have not done your homework.

“He who kills a person without (the latter) having killed another person, it is as if he has killed all of humanity, and he who makes one person survive, it is as if he has caused all humanity to survive” – (32,5) – Quran

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog post for a while now. I often break one of the biggest cardinal rules of blogging which is 1. To make your posts frequent. I’ve broke that rule some time ago, but I’m going to make the effort to not only make these posts more frequent, but more diverse. (inshallah)

So about 3 months ago I listened to a lecture by the late Dr. Amos Wilson on understanding the roots of power in culture. By far Dr. Wilson was one of the premier experts on human consciousness and many other pan-African related areas of interest. One very eye-opening area of interest was his explanation of how there are “vehicles” that are used in society to augment and distort your sense of values, consciousness, and level of cultural morality.

Now when he says “vehicles” he is not referring to Maybachs, Hondas, or even an investment vehicle, he is actually referring to mass media vehicles like television, music, print media and societal indoctrination vehicles by cultures outside of your own. One of the reasons I found this topic so interesting is I often find people discounting how the power of imagery and words can control minds and human behavior. A post I did a while back called “True Cost of Music”, touches on this topic quite a bit. This past Friday at Jumu’ah, (an obligatory congregational prayer/lecture that Muslims attend for Duhr [noon prayer] ), the Khateeb (speaker) said, “There are three areas that you need to watch out for when it comes to proper worship”:

1. Nafs (ego/self)
2. Satan
3. The people you keep as friends

For the sake of this post, I want to stay focused on the 1st bullet in regards to culture. There are 7 heads of evil when we talk about Nafs, and they are the following:

1. False Pride
2. Greed
3. Envy
4. Lust
5. Back Biting (Gossiping)
6. Stinginess
7. Malice

The main head I want to talk about is False Pride. If you listened to the entire segment by Dr. Amos Wilson, the root of what he is trying to explain is this: Ideas of self, role of self, and identity of self can be augmented through vehicles under the consciousness of your mind. Not only can your identity be manipulated to your own demise, but you can be used as a conduit to empower the standards of others. Meaning: Just because you think something is not happening from a physical standpoint, while you are unable to identify the point of manipulation does not mean you are not being manipulated. Central to the term, Quiet Weapons for Silent Wars. This is one of the main reasons why I stopped actively listening to music and have severely pulled back on what I watch. My wife and I restrict our viewing to mostly documentaries and other “Front-line C-SPANian friendly” material. Like Pinocchio being a puppet, human beings can be a puppet by identifying with an “Artificial Identity”, hence False Pride.

This is not a light matter, a recent study by Standford and Princeton university came to the conclusion that men objectify women by observing semi-nude images. How is it that a culture of objectifying women has now become normalized?

The research, conducted by a team including Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske, who first presented the findings in mid-February at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, found that pictures of bikini-clad women activated brain regions associated with objects or tools.

Keep in mind that these are “semi-nude” images (e.g bikini) and not full blown nudity. I’m curious what that study would have revealed with full blown nudity. These results by Dr. Susan Fiske have been posted on hundreds of blogs, and the responses are quite dismissive. Not surprising, considering the average person is unwilling to have an honest level of self-critical analysis regarding their personal sensibilities. I have to be honest, I walk by those newsstands on the NYC train platform and the advertising windows are riddled with imagery after imagery of “soft-pornesque” women draped across various covers for profit. I can guarantee that they’ll be a bunch a men hanging around like a bunch of deviant vultures drooling over the next breast or booty sex pose.

Not to say I didn’t dabble in such material in the past, but I’m not going to deceive myself and act like these images did not augment my view of women in a negative light. In the words of Thomas Sowell, This is Stage One Thinking. To think that society is not paying a price for the often hyper-sexualized identity of women is quite shocking. Obviously I am not the gate keeper of women’s identity or sexuality. That is not my role, although many might accuse me of such acts because they misinterpret my language. I just think we have mountains of evidences from many areas of thought (scientific and religious) to realize that a behavioral change is due on the type of images we bring into our minds, and our household, irrespective of gender. To discount the negative impact is being dishonest. There is a severe level of cognitive dissonance when a man says he respects a women, but then indulges in imagery that is the exact opposite of what his belief claims to be.

The study above is just one example, but “False Pride” can fall into many other categories like child rearing, personal finance, culture, morality and various other behavioral sciences. In many instances, certain types of behavior not only disempower you, but destroy the glue that keeps your community and your relationships healthy. Sometimes we want to see an immediate result, like turning a light switch on and off. Self deception is a characteristic that can happen over several years, not to mention your entire life. Like a stream of water that smoothes the surface of a jagged rock over hundreds, if not thousands of years. These changes are gradual and cannot be captured in a moment. It’s not until you pull back, will you then be able to see the bigger picture.

• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
• Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and on Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Revival of the Religious Sciences by T. J. Winter
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
• The Secret Sales Pitch: An Overview of Subliminal Advertising by August Bullock
• Applied Economics: Beyond Stage One Thinking by Thomas Sowell
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Throwback: This post was written in November of 2006 and I decided to resurface it on the front page as a reminder that “buyer beware”. In these very uncertain economic times we need to be reminded how these corporations have tried to control our mind and buying patterns since the inception of mass media marketing and the study of consumer psychology.

Url: http://www.whyihatethejoneses.com/2006/11/slave-fashion-dominatrix-prices/

I wish I was the one who actually came up with this subject line, but I wasn’t and it’s related to this current post. The topic of this post is something I’ve been meaning to post for a couple weeks now. I actually read this promo on the 1 Train tonight one stop before my stop in the Bronx (231st Street). The full promo is “Slave to Fashion Dominatrix to Prices”. It was created by the discount fashion store Daffys. It was a poster ad on the train. Black background, bold yellow lettering with DAFFYs at the bottom in smaller font.

So what’s the significance of Daffy’s and this post? Mainly to bring light to the power of corporate marketing and peoples behavior. Another reason is to highlight a really eye opening documentary I saw called the Corporation. It is Canadian produced documentary that delves into the nature, history, meteoric rise of the entity we now know as the corporation. I’m not going to delve to deep into the documentary but I will state one significant fact.

Fact: When a set of scientists characterized the behavior of most corporations using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists the came up with one defining behavior and the behavior was that of a psychopath.

Yes folks a psychopath. Now this is not a scare tactic, but more of an attempt to open our eyes to understand who we really are. This is a chance to think within and try to really understand who you are. Are you really who you think you are? Or are we just a jumble of neurotic impulses trained to the needs of various sorts of marketing and corporate agendas? Who are we really? Think about the clothes you wear? Your religion of choice? Or maybe the reason for not becoming part of what many consider organized religion? Your job and occupation of choice? The foods you eat? The person you chose as a wife? Husband? Boyfrend? Girfriend, etc. How about the traditions you choose to participate in? Think about where your motivation comes from to participate in certain cultures and patterns of behavior? Do you worship the traditions, mannerisms, and lifestyle of so-called “dominant cultures” or do you appreciate your own indigenous and ancient roots? What about the music you buy, and the lifestyle you choose to participate in? Have you ever asked yourself..What are my true intentions behind this act?

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine and asked me “Yo, why don’t you drink alcohol?”. I said, “We’ll, why do you drink alcohol?” He said because it makes me feel good and relaxed. I said, well NOT drinking alcohol makes me feel good and relaxed too so we have something in common. He gave me a baffled look. Keep in mind that me and my boy feel exactly the same, yet the outcome for my boy is maybe $50 dollars less in his pocket after a long night of drinking, a brain soaked in a depressive stimulant, and headache the next day. Same feeling, different outcome. Why can’t we think outside of the box of what Budweiser, Remy, and Courvoisier or any other corporation tells us to be? We have the power to choose outside of what corporations impose on us. Don’t be afraid to step outside of what any other so-called “civilized” culture tells you to be. You always had the power to choose, but the corporations, political organizations, spiritual hijackers and countless other blind followers would have you believe otherwise. You are not sheep. Don’t be afraid to choose the traditions and concepts that encourage proper development of self. A sound and conscious mind is a never-ending journey and a battle worth fighting for.

“That’s the information, you can either take it and be intelligent or you
can throw it away and be retarded.” – Sista Souljah

Other links and Related information: