Leaderboard

All i know is that I was around during the Black Panther's hey day. As I have mentioned many times, Fred Hampton the martyred Minister of Defense of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party which was located in Chicago, came from my home town. I didn't know him well because we weren't the same age. To me, he was a sincere person, skilled at spewing inflammatory rhetoric but as far as the party of which he was defense minister was concerned, its impact stemmed mostly from the threat local law enforcement perceived the membership to be - even if all they ever did of note was establish school breakfast programs for inner city school children and other ones who were enrolled in the schools the Panthers set up where the kids were taught to hate whitey. Anyway, to me and my associates, the Black Panthers were romanticized revolutionaries who we never took that seriously because we knew damned well "these niggas were not gonna overthrow the U.S. government". We did, however, like and were amused by how the Panthers shook up The Establishment, especially that psychopathic ogre, J. Edgar Hoover. When I worked at the Post office, one of my co-workers was a Black Panther sympathizer. He was very smart and quite militant and he told me the reason he decided not to join this organization was because they were paper tigers all on ego trips and their reach exceeded their grasp, He was more drawn to the SLA which blew up government buildings and robbed banks and killed cops. During that time, the Fruit of Islam arm of the Black Muslims were a force also to be reckoned with. Just my recollections.

I've always followed the caveat to not write about what you don't know. It has never occurred to me to write a book about anything but black people. I have no problem with inserting white characters into story lines because, for some reason, I feel like I know white people just from interacting with them all my life. They are not burdened with the double consciousness of black people who, in a white controlled world, have learned to skillfully adjust their behavior to mislead unsuspecting white people. With white folk, what you see or discern and detect is pretty much what you get. Of course, Blacks and Whites share human foibles and character traits up to a point - and then the race factors kicks in, at which time, Blacks become a dichotomy. I was around during the times when there were very few black writers to read, so I grew up reading both fiction and nonfiction by Whites. I never had a black teacher, and up until I was a teenager, all the movies I saw had all-white casts except for servants.To this day, I am still not sure how this influenced who I am. I do know, that in my heart, I've never wanted to be white. And all the white people I like, are those who are hip and have soul, and all the black folks who get on my nerves are twits who try to "act white". So, maybe I just like cool, well-informed people with good senses of humor whatever their color... Did I digress, - or what?

　I just finished "Between The World And Me", Ta-Nehisi Cates', recently released book which is written in the form of a letter to his 15-year-old-son and is, in a way, relative to the subject of this thread. I had read excerpts from this book as well as Cornel's West's review in response to Toni Morrison's recommendation, so I decided to see for myself what all the hoopla was about. Sorry, Cornel. I side with Toni on this one. I found this to be a remarkable book and I was impressed not only with its message but also with the concise writing skills of Coates who is a wordsmith extraordinaire. Coates' narrative centers around "The Dream", his designation for what he feels is at the root of white privilege. According to the author, the dream is a toxic state of mind that infects the ethnic pool of those who call themselves "white" and "The Dream" involves their deluded perception of America. Deluded because this oligarchic country is not the noble democracy they believe it to be but is, among other despicable things, an exclusive society where institutionalized racism is as American as apple pie. Which is why black people have no claim to The Dream, Coates contends, and even if they do all the right things and are fortunate enough to acquire financial gain, their white counterparts will still be better off since they belong to the elite club that automatically rejects equality for people with black skin. Coates further extends this entitlement to lower class Whites who he thinks are also better positioned than their black counterparts just by virtue of being white. To him, this status quo is maintained because money is the god in whom America trusts. and the bulk of it is in the hands of a white power structure which will keep it by any means necessary. Coates ends his book on a fatalistic note of resignation, implying that America's slave descendants just have to tolerate white citizens because there's no hope for their redemption, and things could be much worse for blacks. So, if Coates' pessimistic theory is true, the goal of becoming a latter day Horatio Alger, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, is an aspiration that has restrictions when it comes to ambitious, hard working African Americans. To me, another take-away from Coates' dissertation is that in America, black and white history are intertwined and from the beginning to the present, the master/slave relation has continued to exist. Being black in America, whether literally or figuratively, is to be under the yoke of the White Dream. Another interesting observation Coates makes is that swagger and bluster and sassiness are defense mechanisms which black folk have developed over time in reaction to a deep rooted fear that has its origins in the other side of the white dream coin: the black nightmare. Coincidentally, (?) while reading "Between the World And Me", I just happened to come across an article on James Baldwin which included a quote from one of the essays contained in his book, "The Fire Next Time". Re-visiting James Baldwin, I confess to underestimating him. He was indeed, a sage and a seer. In a letter to his nephew, Baldwin wrote: "The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them (white people) and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it." After finishing "Between The World And Me", another provocative quote by exisentialist Friedrich Nietzsche came to my attention. "To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in suffering." As Arsensio Hall, another great philosophical thinker, would say: "Things that make you go hummm." 　

Do monthly thematics with groups of bloggers by blog subject matter, have an overall monthly theme that everyone participates. Post and follow a schedule to engage on each other's blogs around the theme. Use social media to cross promote the posts about the topic making it something of a month long round table discussion. Win win win for bloggers... readers and demographic impacted by the topics of discussion. Schedule themes around topics that are being discussed globally... have a common place to announce thematic changes for breaking news topic changes like 1)the Cosby scandal when it happened, 2)a new Black Lives Matter incident, 3) political developments during the voting season... Even when it is "entertainment" based blog subject matter discussing how current national news events impact the subject matter covered by the blog.

Thanks for that first hand recollection!!!! Good stuff as always.

When I was in the MFA program, my white mentor/instructor told me that I didn't need to write with a chip on my shoulder. That I had no responsibility to anything except the story. I have never learned to do this. I have always written from the experiences I've had as a Black male in America and abroad. He told me I would eventually stop writing due to my insistence on worrying about how the writing will be received or accepted. Ultimately, I guess he was right. I haven't written a book of fiction or short stores... or poems, in years. I've resorted to business writing which is less about race and more about numbers. Does a Black writer have a responsibility to shape the text to and for Black people... I think it's hard not too. Hence the lack of a Harry Potter or big crossover novel by a Black author. Then again, the lack of crossover appeal happens in every artform except music.

That's some deep expository shit you unleashed on us, w.c. edwards. Very articulate and informative. Certain references I could relate to. From childhood, my son has always been a fan of comic books, always fancied himself a comic book artist. He is now middle aged and still immersed in his affinity for this genre. Somewhere along his life's journey, he found religion and now has established his own small publishing company called Kingdom Comics, the banner under which he and a dedicated staff produce a biblical comic book series featuring superheroes on missions to stave off the apocalyptic forces of evil. Their demograph includes the incarcerated population that the prison ministries of churches focus on. There 's not a whole lot of profit to be realizied in this endeavor, but it is making inroads among the inmates languising behind bars, black males who have always been fodder for reading matter. This situation has the potential for a positive impact. Graphic novels and comic books can serve to enrich and stimulate the idle minds of these young black men wasting away in jails. Your theory about the motivation of escapist sci-fi and fantasy fiction was interesting. Conspiciously absent was no reference to the "Game of Thrones" phenomenon that is currently enthralling a large audience. This HBO series based on the books by the same name regularly frustrates its fans by killing off main characters. Its gratuitious sex and violence, however, might be construed as escapism. Recently a friend of mind was telling me that her late mother who would've been over a 100 years were she alive had said that she was descended from a segment of Blacks who came to America but rather than being from West Africa were Moors with an entirely different history. And no sooner had she mentioned this than another person I knew said the same thing about her forefathers. Who knew? Othello and his love for a white woman set a precedent for his countrymen transplanted in America. As someone who dabbles in writing, occasionally self-publishing a chick lit book here, a family saga book there, a paranormal tale elsewhere, I never expected fame or fortune or did I get it. But writers write. Readers read. If you're lucky you find your niche in the literary world.