Leaderboard

Until ultimately it will end. Oppression by one group of another always ends... it is really just a matter of how much damage is done first. @Michel Montvert thanks for sharing those stories. The cure for cancer may have died in some ghetto -- you can pick the country. @Cynique Simone is the GOAT. Anyone obliquely familiar with the sport knows this. I can't speak for the others, but I know inspiration comes from many sources not just the GOAT. This piqued my interest because I was involved in the sport, one in which there are not many Black participants, for all the reasons mentioned.

IMO, there's no baby genocide among Black folks. In fact, many Black women keep babies they cannot afford fo raise financially. There's a connection to poverty as well. Black women do not routinely use abortion as a form of birth control. 😎

Yes, things for Natives politically have become a muddle, with the Ward Churchills (white guy playting Native as you describe) not to mention plenty of Native people with crazed ideas who get attention. And... the sad fact is that even many legitimate tribal members have plenty of white blood. That's what history did to them. There was a lot of mixing, and most of the "half-breeds" ended up on the Native side of the line, likely, or were absorbed by the whites. Also... USA history included reservations, boarding schools, a LOT of violent and vicious pressure to assimilate. to lose indigenous culture. Then in the 60s Indians became hip and many whites wanted to be them. Some of the shenanigans which went on were extreme. Especially offensive was the habit of hippies who'd spent 2 weeks with some tribe then holding workshops at high prices to teach "Native Spiritual Ways" and so on. I have a good perspective on that issue since I did for real live among Native people in Guatemala including studying with a chimán, or priest, but things are not as those hippies taking advantage would have it. One does not learn spiritual ways in a workshop from another white person. This is analogous to the whites presuming to speak politically for Indians. I was told, look, you have learned things. You could perform some of the functions of a chimán here, but you are not Mayan, and so you have no relevance to anyone and nobody would pay you any mind. Also, when you go back among the gringos, you will find that they won't listen to a word you say. So what you know, you can use selectively, wisely, but don't think you can play the role of a chimán anywhere. And NO this is not to be sold for filthy lucre! Since I've spent time with indigenous people from Guatemala and Mexico, I see some significant differences from those of the USA. Here they really got culturaly hammered, and hard. South of the border millions of people speak indigenous languages, and there are large areas with the communities and cultures intact. They were not moved to reservations. Those relocated onto "haciendas" (encomiendas, fincas, or whichever word is used) did lose language and some culture, and they are what we know today as average Mexicans. But one can perceive that the indigenous people fared better than here, and despite extensive prejudice and discrimination still were not culturally thrashed as much as those in the USA. The dynamic is not the same at all. In Mexico, the average person, sometimes called a "mestizo", a Spanish speaker, considers themselves to have indigenous roots. is aware that much of their culture is indigenous, and does not see those who retain indigenous language and identity as "the other". "Somos todos mexicanos," one woman told me when I asked her about the ethnic variety in Mexico. And she was light-skinned and did not speak a native language. Another thing which screwed up the Native voice in the USA is that whatever outlets there were for their thinking and their politics were thoroughly infiltrated and subverted by the FBI in the 70s. A good example, Akwesasne Notes, a newspaper produced by Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) activists. If you're familiar with how COINTELPRO dirty-tricked the BPP you'll know what sort of games I'm talking about. And at Pine Ridge in the 70s the FBI in collaboration with corrupt tribal govt instituted a reign of terror in response to AIM activism. That sort of activity does not occur in Mexico, with the notable exception of the vicious miilitary response by the Mexican govt to the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in the 80s. It is not that indigenous people "have it good" in Mexico, just that the situation is different, and they are not nearly as vilified and abused there as in the USA. In some cases they remain relatively remote, another factor which aids in culture retention (e.g., the Tarahumara, Huichol, Lacandón). P.S. Did y'all know that there are black people in Guatemala? They live on the eastern coast, including in the town of Livingston, and are of Garifuna culture, which also is found in adjacent Honduras.They speak a Native language, since they are essentially an indigenous group with whom so many Africans mixed that the are in appearance "black", though they consider themselves indigenous. I never was around them. The closest I got was Belize, but there people speak English. As to "progressive", I'm talking too much so I'll be brief. I'm tired of hearing all that called "leftist". The LEFT is defined economically, and by the fight for social equality. The term comes from the French Revolution. Today's college dilletants obsessing on pronouns and safe spaces are NOT doing anything that is recognizeably "leftist" to me, but I'm an old 60s radical to whom progressive politics were VERY economically oriented, as well as anti-racist, anti-sexist and environmentalist. But it was all structured around creating an ECONOMICALLY just society, since economic deprivation is at the core of most oppression. is it not? THAT is progressive. Yep.

The. March. On. Washington. August. 1963. About. Jobs. ,Livable. ,Wages,Equality. ,Racism. All. These. Years. Later. Still. Need. More,Jobs. ,Liveable. Wages,Equality. Racism. .The. King. Family. Talks. About. Their. Father. Voting. They. Will. Not. Talk. About ,Preachers Stealing. All. The. Church. Money. Buying. Cars,Mansions ,Not. Caring. About. Poor. Black. Communities. Preachers. In. Prison ,For. Raping. Children. Murdering. Their. Wives.......Pastor. Warnock ,Do. Not. Talk. About. Church. Corruption. Preachers. Are. Money ,Worshipping. Snakes .Jackals ..Hyenas ,Vultures......Bllack. Genocide. Black. Men. Genocide. The. Black. Communities. ,Crack ,Houses. ,Selling. Crack. Prostituting. Teenage. Girls. In. The. Street ,Gangs. Street. Thugs.....Black. Politicians. NAACP ,Church ,The,King Family. Do. Not. Talk. About. Solutions. To. Stop. The ,Black. Genocide. ,Organizing. Kwanzaa. Principles. To. Uplift. Black ,Communities.....

I was 13. I was a white kid in the suburbs. I liked what Dr. King was doing. My parents did not. What they called "rebellion" on my part had already begun to split us apart. I liked the musicians who played there. I liked the black celebs. And Dr. King made such total sense that his words cut to the center of my adolescent brain. A few months later John Kennedy was murdered. I stood lined up for P.E. in Jr. High in Los Angeles listening to the loudspeakers telling us that the President was dead. The naive belief in our perfect country and great world which they'd inculcated in us in school, that was fading as I woke up to the ambient racism, the hypocrisy... well, this was only the beginning. In 1968, a few months after Dr. King was gunned down. so also was Robert Kennedy. By then Malcolm had also been murdered. That year I graduated high school and stepped out into a revolution, We thought the country was being torn apart. We knew that we had to change it, that in its existing form it was not viable nor worth fighting for. There were a lot of young whites like me resonating positively to Dr. King's message and struggle. We wanted to do something. Now I'm 72. And I want to do something. It is far less clear just what one should do at this point! We do not have a great moral voice like Dr. King informing us. We all know what is wrong... but we'll be lucky if the country has any time to do much of anything but combat the forces of fascism and dictatorship which are gathering and looming on the horizon. I felt that the various ethnic groups involved in this struggle back then were pulling together. We were uniting, getting to know each other. That unity is not as great now, there are many voices of division from right and left. The innocence we had then is gone. Now we're cynical and distrustful of nearly everyone. Shoot, I'd get up and give a speech, and it would be a good one, but nobody will listen. Sometimes I feel sorry for younger people who did not experience what we did in the 60s. Much of it was very bad, but the solidarity, the feeling that we would win, the fervor we had for justice... it was great. Things are going to change. and rapidly, as we move forward. Let's all keep the positive motivation strong in us as we continue to struggle for change. If anyone thought the 60s was a mess, you ain't seen nothing yet!

Kenneth No, you don't sound like someone who hates Capitalism to me. But you DO sound like (and I may be wrong) someone who thinks Capitalism isn't good for our people or people in general and that perhaps Socialism would be a better economic system for us. Personally, I think we need a MIXTURE of both Capitalism and Socialism (with an inclination towards Capitalism) for a more balanced and effective economy for OUR people as AfroAmericans. Too much Capitalism will lead to violence and widespread poverty. Too much Socialism will make our people lazy and stagnate progress. We need balance. However whatever we do...WE (AfroAmericans) must decide and control our economic fate and not allow those from outside of our community to do so.

Troy's statement about untapped talent in the ghetto applies not only to gymnastics but to everything. In the inner city, schools are poorer, jobs are scarce, infrastructure is poor, and this was all structured by design in the days of segregation. Since I taught school in such an area I became aware of this in ways that I hadn't learned simply from the ambient progressive information. One could see this globally. Wherever people are poor and kept down (and I firmly believe poverty is entirely a creation of the rich, of the system. The poor themselves do not create it.) their potential is truncated. How much talent is lost in the Mayan community where 4-yr-olds work all day to pick coffee beans. yet the workers are so poor they can't afford to drink coffee? Back to my school... the neighborhood streets run by a gang, poverty and dysfunction rampant, cops who behave like an occupying army. I had 2 kids in my class who were notable, one black and one Mexican, both were geniuses. The black boy, I once said to him, "Look, you make noise all day and refuse to cooperate yet I know very well that you are smart enough that we could put you in high school and you'd be able to do well (this was a 4th grader). You could do very well academically. why not do it?" He grabbed a book, opened it to a page, scanned the page for about 2 seconds, closed the book and gave me a synopsis of what the page said that was as good as any teacher could do. "Damn!" I said, whoops, bad word, but, "Damn, see what I mean? You could fly through high school and college, you're very intelligent." "Yeah who cares," he responded, "already I'm making more money than you make." Of course that path leads to a bullet or a jail cell, I pointed out. He didn't care. The Mexican kid could remember everything ever said in class. I could ask him a question about what I'd taught last week and he remembered every word. I would say to him, "What's 49 times 148?" And he'd tell me the answer before my calculator could. Well, I did home visits at that school, which no teachers do any more, and certainly not in S. Central L.A., but I did since I'd made friends with the gang and had "protection". This kid's house... his mother was in the back room shooting up. The baby was crawling around wailing with about 3 poops in the diaper. The house smelled of urine and beer. The father was in the front yard in a van selling drugs. Now,, let's guess where these 2 ended up. I don't know, but the odds were that they did not do well. THAT is lost talent, lost potential, lost lives in action and 100% due to the lousy environment which was CREATED for them by those in power. I had a professor in grad school at UCLA who'd studied how the S. Central ghetto was created. He traced everything, and the answer? BY DESIGN, by collaboration between politicians, landowners, store owners... red-lining, oh yes, and realtors---homeowner covenants stipulating that when you sell the house, the buyer must be white. How much talent was lost to the USA during Jim Crow days? How many janitors could have been nuclear scientists or great artists? How many potential community leaders are lost to gangbanging and to the victimization which occurs inevitably simply by living in the inner city? Some love to say, "Anyone can make it, it's all up to the individual, nobody is stopping you." Sorry, but the system is stopping people. One's environment does have an effect on one's outcome. I had a friend in Pittsburgh who was descended from slaves which had been owned by my great-great-grandfather in what is now West Virginia, then Virginia. He lived in Homewood (ghetto), his father could never find a good job, sometimes they were hungry, his school was bad, they had only the bare minimum of comforts in their house. I grew up in the suburbs, my dad though a poor hillbilly originally got the GI Bill and went to the university which would not accept blacks at that time, ended up with a white-collar job, we had lots of food, new clothes, books, toys, piano lessons... Walking around the Univ. of Pittsburgh area whites in the street (this was in the 70s) would actually give me CRAP for being with a black person. I once said, "Damn, is it like this all the time?" and he said, "Welcome to our world." I was looking for an apt around Pitt and the landlord while showing the place assured me he wouldn't rent to blacks, so "this place is clean". Must I go on? Once I was there observing, I perceived this racism at every turn, simply by keeping my eyes open. By the way, a realtor in Los Angeles once assured me that I needn't worry, because he wouldn't "rent to Mexicans". This all sounds "systemic" and "institutionalized" to me...

Absolutely. Yes, @Michel Montvert My college Jamaican friends and other Caribbean friends have caused me to know this term. It was many years ago when I studied this term, but I think it connects to the East Indian slave trade and also I know of Black Cubans who are associated with this term.

The way millions of orphans and adopted children have. You invoke Reagan when the issue isn’t a political one. We aren’t talking about White people. The purpose of this post was to focus on our mindset and what we were willing to tolerate. This is a Black issue that Black people have to come to terms with. Many Black fathers have driven Black women to have abortion because of their pride.

To continue to enrich those that benefit from the system. @daniellegfny i remember Dominque 🙂 interestingly i drew inspiration from the best gymnasts regardless of there so called race. They could be Russian or Japanese it did not really matter i had a poster of Japanese dude on my wall for years as a teenager. This was before Americans were very competitive before Kurt Thomas and them… there was a brother from the Bronx Mario Mecuteon (sp?) he would have been an Olympian but Carter boycotted that one — a great gymnast i have no idea what happened to him after that…

The term "socialist" is used far and wide these days. It can mean almost anything, apparently. RepubliQans claim that the Nazis were socialists. The superior societies of the world are all demosocialist---Germany, UK, France, Denmark, Spain, Israel, Singapore, Australia, Canada, etc.---and so certainly there must be something good about some sort of socialism, judging from the facts at hand. Sadly there are many nefarious forces backing this or that group. We have on the Left George Soros who funds Democratic or progressive activities in various countries. We've not seen anything nefarious about this, as he's supporting liberal causes. not communism. Other forces are less benevolent in their intent. such as those emanating from Russia. These days there are people who work in St. Petersburg, and I don't mean Florida, all over the internet. Russian as well as Chinese influence has been exerted to motivate people to hit the streets, including show up at school board meetings armed to threaten teachers over imaginary "CRT". There were links of that action to Chinese disinformation and disruption online. Fostering discord in the USA, it should be obvious to all, is in the interests of the nations who have hostile intent toward the USA. Chief among those: Russia and China. So it is confusing and one has to be skeptical. The chaotic situation of the 60s was nothing compared to the complex interaction of a million forces on the internet, in a society already far more fractured than it was then.

Let me guess....Republican Bureau of Investigation (RBI). The RBI would be a petty azz agency and bring back COINTELPRO ultimately setting Black folks back 100 years. 🤣😎

Hence the reasons for their apostasy.

Hey there's never anything wrong with improving yourself. I know I come off sounding like someone who hates Capitalism and rich people. I can assure you that's not the case. But I think we've broken the Social Contract between labor and business that paid people enough to live comfortably and secure. Labor offered a chance to improve yourself. Never mind it was mainly for white men not blacks or women. At any rate I hope you make it brother. If you do just treat workers better than you've been treated. check out my blog AALBC Black Capitalism and Black Freedom - Race and Beyond - AALBC.com’s Discussion Forums