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For most of my life, I was the guy most wannabee thugs wished they could be. Officially declared a "menace to society", I was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for my role as mastermind of a series of daring bank robberies in the 70s. Two involved shootouts. One with the police. The other with a citizen in a bank parking lot where I narrowly missed being killed. While confined, I took part in an even more daring prison escape. Despite this seeming penchant for violence, I consoled myself with the notion that I was merely a poet trapped in a gangsta's body and oddly enough, this wasn't far from the truth as I had evolved from a family of teachers, four of whom taught English. As such, I learned, early on, to respect and to appreciate language since my grandmother was very strict and would not tolerate improper grammar under her roof. From the start, there appeared to be a household conspiracy to convert me into a writer. By the time I was ten, I possessed a private library fit for a scholar, had a new typewriter, a big desk, and plenty of blank paper. By 11, I had mastered the dictionary, was a whiz at Scrabble, and was a honor roll student in school. At twelve, I had completed my first novel. By my 13th birthday, I had discovered hustling and I immediately dropped out of school and adopted "the streets" as my home. By 14, I was in reform school for assaulting a police officer. While there, I was a star journalist, the first black deemed smart enough to work in the print shop and on the in-house newsletter. I served one year and a day. Upon my release, with hardly any delays, I embarked on a personal crime spree, and at the age of 15 years-old, I was sent to prison where I was the youngest convict there. While in the Youth Center, I acquired my high school diploma at 16 years-old, wrote my first play, turned militant, and when released at 19, went to New York to join the Black Panthers. In New York, I discovered heroin. Writing and the revolution would both have to wait as a drug habit left little room for anything else. When I tired of being a junkie, I kicked my fascination with getting high, but years later would emerge as the "alleged" kingpin of a notorious heroin distribution ring. Finally brought down by the FBI and DEA in 1997, I again was sent to federal prison. This time I would be gone for a decade, but once more I turned back to what I had turned my back on: writing. I studied journalism, started a writer's colony, mentored other aspiring prison writers, four of whom are now published, one a bestselling street-lit author. I edited and founded various newsletters, performed freelance editorial services for outside writers while quietly perfecting my craft. Hailed by some as one of the greatest prison writers ever, I was interviewed by numerous tv and print outlets. My writings have even been studied in an English class at an university where I was invited to lecture. While in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, I published two novels, but soured on traditional publishing after a deal gone bad with a well-known publisher. I also developed two programs. One, PROJECT UPLIFT, which deals with drug-dealer addiction. The second, GIRLSMART, a community service program concerned with at-risk, teenaged, black girls. This program is a counter to the BET-inspired video vixen syndrome where sisters opt to employ their booty rather than their brains. At last, I have finally gone from wrong to "write"

Everyone knows that the Jews are God’s Chosen People, but everyone believes that the Jews who now occupy Israel are the trues ones spoken of in the Bible. Well, they are not the ones, we are. Thankfully, God said that He would leave a mark upon His people that would serve as a sign for who they are. I welcome you, at this point, to pull out your Bibles and turn to Deuteronomy 28. This was a very defining moment for us because it is through these specific passages that we are DEFINED. Please permit me the simple pleasure of telling you just how important that moment was. It was big for us because we are the only people that God Almighty made a covenant with. The Ten Commandments were meant specifically for us. God was not talking to any other people except us---His Chosen Ones in the exact same way that Jesus mentioned on more than one instance that he had come only to the lost sheep of Israel. As harsh as it may sound, Jesus’ whole ministry was not to save the world, but to save us, the Chosen Ones of God, the lost sheep of Israel. For the record, Jesus was from the tribe of Judah, the exact same tribe that we are from. In essence, Jesus was our homeboy. Okay, one other regression. Hitler knew who we are. There is a film as well as a book where Hitler patiently explains to his top generals who the true Jews were. He told them that the blacks were the real Jews. I guess that Hitler wanted it known that he was not killing God’s people because he once remarked about how America would one day be punished for enslaving God’s people. As bad as Hitler was, he was not foolish enough to tinker with God’s Chosen Ones. He left that up to Uncle Sam. Now, back to the story. Upon the Mount that day, Moses informed the newly-freed Hebrews whom he gathered together and proclaimed before them the news that on that day: “Take heed and listen, O Israel. This day you have become the people of the Lord your God.” He went on to spell out to us in clear, specific terms about what was about to go down. Moses told the Hebrews that if they obeyed God that they would be blessed. He also told them that they would be cursed if they failed to obey the commandments of God. We, via our forefathers, disobeyed God by worshipping false idols, and sure enough the aforementioned curses fell upon us. Since it is by way of these curses that the true Children of God are marked, let’s take a peek at them. Well, read ‘em and weep. Deuteronomy Chapter 28, verses 14-68. I implore, encourage, urge, and pray that you will study the video on YouTube called (1)THE CURSES OF TRUE ISRAEL. (2) THE CURSES OF THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY 28: 14-68. There are others. Please see for yourself. This is no joke. At last, the truth is before you. God, Most High, declared that if we disobeyed Him that He would send us back to Egypt in ships. What did that mean? Let’s break it down. Biblically, Egypt was known to the Hebrews as “the house of bondage” so when we were told that we would get shipped back to Egypt, God didn’t mean the physical place named Egypt. What was referenced was that we would again be sent into bondage, only this time in ships. Sound familiar. Ever wonder why we seem to be everywhere. Well, it is because God said that He would scatter us among all the nations of the world. In those verses, God tells us that we shall betroth a wife, but that another man shall lie with her. That happened quite a lot in slavery, don’t you think? We were also told that we would build a house but another man would live in it. What else was said? Oh yeah, what about the verse that says that our sons and daughters would be taken away from us and sold and that there would be nothing we could do about it. God told us in those verses that He would send against us an enemy from afar, a nation whose tongue we wouldn’t understand. He said that we would became “an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword” among all the nations where He would send us. I mean, shoot, we are an astonishment to each other. Just keeping it real, I have to admit that the black youth of today are an astonishment to me, but I remember how parents in the 70s were astonished at the youth of that time. As for bywords…..what about nigger, coon, monkey, Sambo? All these biblical markers identify us as the Children of Israel, God’s Chosen Ones. And sure enough, God punished us as any parent would when their children are disobedient. We openly disobeyed God and the aforementioned curses are the reason why we are suffering today, but are you ready to hear about the remedy? That’s right, there is a remedy. And given the cruel nature of our suffering, it would seem almost implausible to suggest a remedy that is so distinguishingly simple that it almost defies logic. However, God has told us that He will end our suffering if we REPENT and turn back to Him. However, there is a slight spiritual catch, namely that we must repent as a nation! It’s that simple. All we must do is to collectively REPENT. This has always been the key for us. Whoa, wait a minute. If that has been the key for us, does that mean that this is not the first time we have had to do this repentance thing? Let me pull your coat to something. The Bible ain’t nothing but our history book. The whole Bible is about us------and not about any other peoples on the entire face of the earth! And yes, due to our stiff-necked disobedience to God, we have been slaves practically all of our existence. Let me pause for a moment just to allow a moment of reverence for what now is. All at once, our complete heritage is before us. We can, at last, KNOW. We no longer have to assume shit. The truth is here, and the unadulterated truth is that of all the people on the planet, we are the only people that God calls His Own. Celebrate that, although the behavior of our forefathers was less than stellar and due to the choices they made, we were doomed to the misery we now suffer. It’s all about us. US! Okay, let me stop stalling. The truth will no longer permit me to be soft or apologetic so I boldly assert that God is personal with us. All those prophets in The Bible did not come for any other people. They came to warn us and to call us back to the right path. Not them. God Himself says that He is the God of Israel. In the Bible, God laments over our disobedience. In essence, we disappointed our God, who chose us to be His representatives on earth. We were supposed to teach the world how to live. We were to be the leaders of the world. Look at us. Even in our depraved state, the whole world emulates us. I don’t give a damn what we do, the rest of the world immediately follows suit. They want to be like us, they emulate our style, our dress, our culture. We are the best athletes and entertainers. In biblical lore, Judah was known as “the praisers”. Imagine that. We are praised all over the world for our abilities. Brothers and sisters, we were born to lead the world, but we are leading them to hell. Just remember that we can rule again as in the days of Solomon. All we have to do is to REPENT as a nation. To show how personal it is between Almighty God and us, His people, check out Isaiah 3: 18-26. Here, God chastises the black woman, known as the Daughters of Zion. It is and has never been any secret that the black woman is the most beautiful in existence. However, due to her great beauty, the sistas became “all that and a bag of chips”, and had to get straightened out. God Himself said that sistas were “haughty and walked with outstretched neck and wanton eyes.” Sistas were so sassy and fresh that God Almighty said that he would strike the Daughters of Zion with a scab on the crown of their heads. The verse reads that “Instead of well-set hair, baldness.” God said that this hair problem was meant to brand the sistas. Don’t get much more personal than that, does it, sistas? Now, you know exactly why your hair won’t grow. God also said that the brothas would die by the sword. We may be His children, but He doesn’t play with us. If, by chance, you have a few more minutes to spare, I would enjoy the privilege of taking you on a brief biblical journey depicting a spiritual snapshot of our trek into spiritual darkness and physical damnation. If you think we are something else now, rest assured that we were just as something else way back then, and it was this attitude that kept getting us in trouble with God. I mean, it has always been personal between God and us. He said that He had set us apart as His personal treasure. Wow….that’s deep. And it is good for us that God also said that he would never cast us away because we started acting up almost from the time we left Egypt. Anyway, due to our disobedience to God, we were enslaved by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, but it was the Romans who did us the most damage, and the reason we were even on the West Coast of Africa is that we fled there to get away from Roman persecution. Is the picture getting any clearer now? Oh yeah, lest I forget, I must add that by the time of the Roman slaughter of us, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel had been dispersed and the two remaining tribes, Judah and Benjamin, simply became The tribe of Judah. Now, for a review. Judah was the name of the Israelite tribe that fled into Africa to get away from the Romans, and guess what happened to Judah? It shouldn’t take much to decipher that it was Judah who the Africans sold into slavery and put upon the ships going to America and elsewhere. Once more, we are the descendants of the tribe of Judah. Moreover, we are Judah! Okay, let’s get back to the part about repenting. On each and every one of those occasions mentioned above about us being in captivity by some other people, the suffering always ended when the people, as a nation REPENTED. It worked every time, but during all the other periods of our enslavement, we went in bondage together so whenever we got tired of worshipping other people’s idols, all we had to do was to get together and to repent. With us, it is different this time. You see, in those earlier captivities, we knew exactly who we were. We were just rebellious. In this present period of affliction, we do not know who we are so we don’t know what to do to get right. God was so through with us that this time, he split us up and scattered us to the four corners of the globe. This unarguably was going to be a major obstacle to any national day of repentance as in times past because we are scattered. But right now before your very eyes, black people all over the world are waking up to who we are. This is The Great Awakening. This is real. Look on YouTube and check out videos from people like The Kingdom Preppers, Truth Unedited, The School of Hebrews, The Seed of Israel, and countless more. Let me take a second to check all those who say that black skin is a curse. Not true. Remember Moses. Well, Moses had a sister named Miriam whom God cursed because she had spoken against Moses. Guess how God cursed Miriam. He cursed her by turning her skin white, making her a leper. Ain’t trying to be racist, but, hey, just saying. If anything, white skin seemed to be cursed. Again, just saying. But for the record, do you want to know what Miriam said or did to get herself a cursing. Well, she got into God’s business by fussing at her brother Moses for marrying a foreign woman. In a way, she was right in that God had warned us not to mix our seed with other people, but it was not for her to chastise Moses for it. Let me tell you something. God loved and favored us so much that He wanted us to remain pure, free from the taint of others outside our tribe. We are God’s special people, a people that He set aside for Himself, but we are too stubborn and hard-headed to get right, and to enjoy the blessings. But God did say that one day He was going to gather us all up. It would be then, after we REPENT, that all our woes will be over. Lastly this. Here is scientific proof that supports unequivocally that we, the so-called black man and black woman in Amerikkka, are the folks in the Bible.

Does everybody know that Jews are god's chosen people?? Are others obligated to accept your premise in regard to the Old Testament, as opposed to their suspicions about this book being nothing more than Hebrew folk tales portraying god as an ego-centric, jealous, petty entity who brings down his wrath on all of those who don't conform to his wishes? And where does the character of Jesus fit into this drama that centers around a quest to banish Satan, a villain who is seemingly as powerful as god? Also conspicuously absent in this lore are all the Eastern sects made up of followers mesmerized by the "Mystics" whose rituals and disciplines these followers choose to embrace, - details about which are not mentioned in the bible? In all of these biblical rationales, black people seem sentenced to a life of victimhood and, with this being the the case, why should they take pride in this status and proclaim themselves to be the favorite of a deity who is disgusted with them? I think you get where i am coming from and i'm sure you have previously encountered skeptics like me. Being an iconoclast is a mind-set that just seems to come natural to me and, as such, i am more of a spiritual person than a religious one. - a truth seeker called to go with the flow of my personal relationship with a higher power which communicates with me, through me. That's why i appreciate Buddhism. In reality, however, does it matter what folks believe as long as it comforts them? Anyway, I am sure that Chevdove and Pioneer with be in sync with much of what you say and will add their input to the subject.

I don't know a whole lot, and the Shemites are a new one on me. Who are they? This is actually more in Chevdove's area of expertise.

Yes, of course, The Lembas of Africa as well. You know more.....I'm sure

This is what I personally think about blacks in the gay community. No matter what their religious, political, or sexual preferences, if we are to achieve anything significant as a collective, then all black people must be included. We cannot afford to deny anyone a seat at the table when we are struggling to do what right's for the whole tribe. We simply keep our differences to ourselves and deal with our difference in-house. Back when I was young, we had a thing called "not airing our dirty laundry in public" which meant we kept our private bickering to ourselves. If we were divided and fractured internally, that was our business, and you deal with that in private. This has to be done to show that we will always present a united front to the outside world. This way, they can't divide and conquer us. I don't give a damn if you like men, women, or chickens, if you love black people, then let's work together to break our chains. The incidental, in-house fighting must be put on the back burner until we get to a point where we can operate from a position of strength. In today world of FB, we take a special delight in airing our dirty laundry in the biggest public forum ever. Here is something I wrote years ago in THE UNMAKING OF THE BLACK MAN.( ** After enduring the atrocities of slavery, in what was to be the first full-scale attempt at black genocide, we opted for individualism. Invariably, though, not surprising, blacks pretty much celebrated their release from bondage by going their own ways, something so unconventional and contrary that it defied reason. The whole point of freedom…….Well, there should have never been a puzzle to freedom, and the very first steps should have been to remain intact as a collective, and then to evolve into a community. In practice, individualism was the greatest blow to the stability of the blossoming black community. Partly through progressive individualism, we failed to establish a coherent set of values that would have been conducive to the development of a positive image. Additionally, following the Great Migration, black America evolved into a pluralistic society with each half only willing to invest in their own self-interests.**) ""Here is another passage from that same book and that same paragraph. (In contrast, African-Americans had no image, no national identity to fall back on, and without an image to spell out their mission, we had nothing to aspire to. We had no glory to recapture, or no honor to reclaim. Instead, we were without vision. Thus, with blacks, a new standardized response to suffering was introduced which marked both a defining moment as well as a turning point in our evolution."") This somewhat speaks to something that evidently bothers Chevdove (and me 2) because it was then in our evolution that we started to pull the "Victim" card. Yes, long before the proverbial "race card" there was the "victim card" and we still play it with unimaginable gusto. Black men have always been victimized, but when has anyone ever been listening? If no one could believe black men were getting lynched, who the hell was going to believe they were being molested, so they shut up. Until now, So, yeah, we gotta become more inclusive. We get so charmed by upward mobility that when we get to the next level, we talk shit about the people we just left behind. WE move up, we get exclusively more fractured as a group. It is this willingness to exclude others because of differences is why our communities are still fucked up. We shun niggas coming out of prison like they suffer from a plague, but who the hell do you think holds the key to healing the community? We are the ones that fucked it up. We know how to fix it. We are the ones who set most of the practices in place that the young ones follow. We set it up, we know how to dismantle it. If you want a cure for snakebite, damned what the doctor say, you get the cure from the m***f***g snake. Peace & love. Plz. note that my opinions are my own and not an attack upon anyone's belief.

Hey @Gibran my reaction was to a long debate we had on the subject of Black women not feeling protected by Black man. It was a position I rejected primary because I spend all of my money, time, and energy doing just this for my wife and two daughters. I also know other Brother who do the same. However your point (below) is important to consider. I feel like I fighting every obstacle imaginable trying to uplift Black people, so when sistas say they don't feel protected by us, I reacted, defensively, as if it was just another battle I have to fight. But don't want to fight Black women. I want to support them, because we need them. We need each other. I met a sista recently that reminded me of this. @Mel Hopkins, @Cynique, @Chevdove maybe I needed to hear it from older, wiser Black man. Peace, Troy