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Mel I believe if you're a man of any color and can't make in a world set up for men, then too bad. This IS patriarchal system...no doubt. But even in a male dominated partriarchal system it is commonly understood that only CERTAIN men will ever have any meaninful power while the fate of other men are little better than the women and children of that society. Infact, in most patriarchal cultures the men in charge not only prevent OTHER men from acquiring power....but while they may subjegate and abuse the women....they often KILL off the other men to avoid the threat of competition and resistance. So I suppose the key is a more equal egalitarian system that treats everyone fairly and power is delegated toward individuals who are qualified to posses it.

I really like this perspective too! It forces us to all deal with the dynamics of who we are now... while my mtDNA is said to be the same as the present day North Africans ...my paternal lineage, the climate, isolation and a whole host of environmental contributors might make it extremely difficult for me to survive in East Africa today (where my maternal line is said to have its origins.) What is true for me - is true for the rest of the hyphen-Americans . We North Americans are a new breed. And despite the color of our skin we are as unique to the gene pool as was the first ascendant of the woman who left Africa to set up shop in what is now called Europe and Asia. Keep pushing us out of comfort zone @Cynique ... I may not like it but it is so very necessary...

Cynique What you said is the reason no longer call myself a "Pan African". I don't necessarily hold African culture as ideal or superior to the one we as AfroAmericans are practicing in America today. Infact, we were practicing it WHEN Europeans who had a more technologically advanced weaponry were able to come in and enslave and colonize our people. So going back to that SAME system would be a mistake. We should constantly seek to go forward and look for ways to improve ourselves individually and as a community in terms of technology, language, medicine, spirituality, ect... We can use the past as a REFERENCE, but the constant glorification of African culture and African history (much of which is unproven) that so many of our people are engulfed in is in my opinion a waste of valuable time and energy. Besides, most Africans don't accept us as authentically African anyway....lol. We are Americans (including the Blacks of Central and South America) and should use our opportunity in America to advance our cause and possibly HELP Africa to solve some of it's many ills....while solving our own.

One of my LinkedIn connections posted this washington post article that forced me to turn my attention to black males. As a mother to 3 daughters and me being a woman, I tend not to pay a lot of attention to the state of black boys. It is not my emotional hotspot. I believe if you're a man of any color and can't make in a world set up for men, then too bad. My focus is black women; women and social justice. As you will see in this Department of Labor chart Black women in the labor force black women are at the bottom of the economic totem pole. We are doing better but still not as well as our black brothers and white 'daughters' and our white 'sons' who are soaring in this economy. I put my effort in raising the profile of black women; women and I will join in a fight for social justice. So you can only imagine how this article "America has locked up so many black people it has warped our sense of reality" really got my "panties in a bunch". This article on the research of how mass incarceration benefits the economic numbers by specifically targeting black males shows just how far destroying black boys really goes. It's as if the oligarchs say, "Nothing personal but we need to make sure the United States of America, Inc., looks good on paper. So just like we take money out of circulation to make it more valuable, we also need to take black men out of circulation and off the books." The nefarious plot looks like this: First we'll under fund their primary education and create a school to prison pipeline. The black boys (and an increasing amount of black girls) who survive childhood will go straight to prison. Except there's an anomaly; black females are surviving and while it is nowhere near thriving, somehow, economically, black women are filling the spots vacated by black male incarceration. I don't know about anyone else but I'd rather be an AND not INSTEAD OF in the story. But I digress. Back to the oligarchs who say, "There now "we" have tidy accounting books. The U.S., Inc. has a 4.5 unemployment rate... and we owe to the 1.6 million incarcerated who we wiped off the books."

The LAND of what is called the "Middle East" covers both Asia, Africa, and in some cases Europe (Turkey, Armenia). And the original inhabitants of the land refered to as the the "Middle East" was occupied by dark skinned people whom we would call African or East Indian today. However much of the history of that land involves Caucasians who came down from central Asia and occupied much of the land, mixed in with the original inhabitants, introduced their own systems and cultures, and fused their own religious beliefs with the beliefs of the original inhabitants. So it's not as cut and dry as saying, "The Egyptians were Black" or "The Israelites were African". It's very mixed and complicated. Africans are indeed spiritual people, but I doubt that the keys to that spirituality will ever be found in such a man-made and flawed book as the Bible.

As for email lurker... Join in filmmaker! The water is fine!

Why shouldn't black American culture be defined by our time in after slavery?? That's the period when our unique culture came into being And our worship and speech and music are as different from Africa as they are alike. Our cuisine is certainly incompatiable with Africans. Which is why there is such a high rate of diabetes and lactose intolerance and hypertension among American blacks. And altho you continue to insist that we are all alike. Externally we are not. Even African tribes are very distinguishable from each other, ranging from Pygmies to Watusis from the blue-blacks to the amber browns, not to mention their different customs and language and predispositions. Nigeria, which is where the bulk of slaves came from have little in common with Zulus. Caucasians also different from each other in physical traits. Scandinavians look nothing like Italians. Asians are distinctly different from Blacks. And nobody said that everything was stripped from us but you choose to ignore the effects of white rape in the slave quarters. You talk as if we are not all mixed up. Who is to say what our core being is? You want to put all people of color in one box. Knock yourself out.

I appreciate your brevity, Pioneer. Revisionist history is a bitch. LOL My observations take the form of a question. As a hybrid crop, deeply rooted in American soil for the last 400 years, why do Black Americans need a make-shift African heritage? What has Afrocentrism done for Black Americans lately? How does it improve their day-to-day lives? Will it banish racism or dissipate white privilege? Will it provide jobs and good schools, or prevent the hazards of driving while black, or shooting while driving? Will it rehabilitate an addiction to the Social Media? Or energize prayers directed to an indifferent Jesus? Or does it just provide a hypenated label, and showcase those who change their names or parade around wearing "made in China" African garb or conduct classes that provide easy A's at community colleges? Yeah, yeah, yeah, "we" need to know who "we" are, and where "we" came from so "we" can take pride in what? How the slick Europeans outfoxed guileless Africans and stole all of their resources and culture. Knowledge is power but the truth is the light and it now exposes a dark continent rife with wars and disease and poverty. History is in the realm of enlightenment, but there's a difference between studying it and adopting it. between romanticizing it and putting it in perspective. Black Americans don't need a second-hand heritage. They have their own unique culture and rich negro history indigenous to their tenure in this country. They have the underground railroad and the civil rights movement, Nat Turner and Martin Luther King, Carter Woodson and Cornel West, Black Wall Street and the Harlem Renaissance , the Buffalo soldiers and Tuskegee airman, Zora and Maya, Jazz and Rap, HBCU scholars and NBA stars, and much much more. And it's not as if ebony Nigerians or tawny Egyptians offer more than a passing nod to the step children of Mother Africa As Negro history month draws to a close, its a good time to appreciate the uniqueness of America's black experience as opposed to the aggrandization of Africa's influence.

Now I also appreciate that there are some people who love to see two people go at it I hope I didn't miss anything "juicy"....lol. I popped in here yesterday and read something about me being trifflin' with nothing better to do. So I FOUND something to do! I went to a lecture last night about the targettng of Black boys and how the mass incarceration system played a huge role in this and thought about this thread. One of the speakers, a sister of Haitian descent by way of Brooklyn but relocated to Michigan and now works either with or out of the local Prosecutor's office drilled down on the "zero tolerance" policy in most public schools today where boys...especially Black boys...are being severely punished (expelled, medicated) for the most minor of disturbances. She's seen how this policy seem to be a starting point for how so many young Black men she's come across end up in the system. I've been noticing this for years. Black boys are facing much harsher punishments for things all of us did when we were kids like fighting or being late for class. They either get kicked out or they are labled as "troubled" and put on psychiatric medication. I believe this serves as an intimidation tactic also. I believe the plan is to produce a very timid, sterile, passive society where corporate America can treat their workers any kind of way without the fear of anyone standing up and challenging them in the workplace. This is one of the reasons I stress to young Black boys and girls GET YOUR OWN BUSINESS if you can. If people don't want to treat you properly in their system, you should find ways to create your own system of doing things.