Cynique

Believe it or not, this is a subject i don't have an opinion about. Some things were better in my early days and some things are better in the twilight of my life. Upon reaching 82, what is interesting to me is the realization that during the time and the places and the years that I have been around, all of the calamitous things that were happening in the country and to black people did not have a great impact on my day to day personal life, which has always been stable. It's like I have been observing the world from the vantage point of a spectator. My detachment is not something I'm proud of, but for some reason whoever was president, whichever war was being fought, whatever shape the economy was in, or whatever racial issue were trending, I was always able to stay under the radar if I so chose, which I often did. Other times my involvement was limited strictly to commentary. Racism never greatly inconvenienced me, possibly because i didn't aim for the sky but led an uncomplicated mid-level existence. The angst of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates strikes me as the breast beating of a black man lamenting because he's not white. One thing I hate about black conservative Republicans is that they are like carbon copies of white people. The things that have shaped my nonchalance undoubtedly include how I've actually never been called a nigger to my face. Any racial discrimination I encountered I blew off because it was always subtle and because I was never particularly interested in integrating with white people, or being where I wasn't wanted just to break racial barriers. I left the boat-rocking to the social activists, who I would encourage with words of approval. Oddly enough white people would reach out to me, almost as if my indifference to them was a challenge.They tended to want to make me an example of how unprejudiced they were. Maybe they perceived my nonchalance as non threatening. Within my own race, my color or anybody else's color was never a big deal to me and the fact that I didn't suck up to white people was something other Blacks seemed to appreciate. I wonder how atypical my black experience is? I have not ruled out the possibility that the way I have dealt with being black is a defense mechanism because I never wanted to give whites the satisfaction of thinking their acceptance mattered to me. But, even as a child, I always felt that racial discrimination was white people's loss not mine.

Thank you, Troy! How thoughtful of you! Iconoclast? Maybe. Intellectual? Not so much.

Why get so bent out of shape by what Troy said? Don't be so thin-skinned. This forum is not a tea party. It's a place for those who can take it as well as dish it out. So, did you figure out what Dickey was talking about from the responses here? Or did they just confuse things more??

Even better than Latin, Greek etymology is probably more apt in this case. Auto as a prefix suggests "I". as in autobiography. Symph suggest "in concert with" as in symphony. Philia has to do with love.

My take on Toni Morrison is that she doesn't take herself as seriously as those who pander to her do. She put her books and opinions out there and isn't overly concerned with the reaction to it. She is truly her own person.

Were you not able to figure out what the words meant by the context in which they were used? Taking into consideration the genre of Eric Jerome Dickey books, and going back to my high school Latin, I would guess that the first word has something to do with reciprocal sexual pleasure achieved with another person, and the second word as sexual pleasure achieved through self-gratification.

You know, Troy, the longer I live, the less impressed I am with people who I am supposed to put on a pedestal and regard with awe, and I am even less fazed by the self-appointed critics who tell me I should put such people on a pedestal and hold them in awe.The words of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Cornel West, TaNehisi Coates are supposed respire with brilliance and wisdom and expertise. Or are they just the dense verbiage of the anointed literati passing off their opinions as fact? Cornel West cares about the poor. Does he put his money where his mouth is?. What is the narrative in regard to the black experience, which is very diverse. Who are the "people"? Them or us? What is control and is it better than chaos? Do black lives matter? Or do they degenerate into anti-matter? Who knows? Words words words. Meaningless sounds and syllables which if repeatedly uttered, morph into gibberish. So, screw Morrison, Baldwin, West, and Coates, et al. Their garrulous angst and analyses don't solve problems. Problems solve themselves because life is a state of flux and nothing stays the same - except change. Tuesday, August 18th will be my 82nd birthday and, to me, America is a toilet, Americans are pissed off, and I don't give a shit. Can you say Existentialism???

Why, Troy, do you always bend over backwards to excuse or support Cornel West, yet give such short shrift to Obama who is not exactly a lightweight? Or Al Sharpton who is a gritty black spokesman.They are also examples that are not so simple to explain away. Just because Obama and Sharpton eskew the intellectual rhetoric and theory that West spews doesn't make them totally ineffective. They, instead, pick their battles, antagonizing and frustrating and exposing Conservative Republicans as the fools that they are. Cornel West with all of his bedazzling didactism doesn't get any better results. Also, why do you implicitly discredit Toni Morrison's assertions about Ta-Nehisi Coates, and dutifully embrace the substance of Cornel West's critique of him, while apologizing for the style of it. It's like your being acquainted with him has turned you into a Cornel West groupie and you think he can do no wrong. Which doesn't make you that much different from the die-hard Obama fans who disgust you.

IMO, Facebook, Twitter, Huffington Post, etc., are vehicles that provide their posters and pundits with a broad, diverse audience, and this exposure offers an added bonus of a trickle-down effect that makes their opinions the subject for discussion on second-tier forums. Yes, these "perks" are trade-offs that involve a degree of exploitation but this, too, impacts on a broad cross section of users; not just Blacks. The movers and shakers of America's media exist in a rarified atmosphere that thrives on power and control. In a perfect world, things would be different and nice guys wouldn't finish last. This is a bitter pill to swallow but - it does regulate one's predisposition to think that Life is fair. Cornel West imagines himself an Oracle and his ego gets bruised when upstarts don't conform to the criteria he has established making himself the standard by which other pretenders should be measured. With the exception that West is brilliant, his mind-set is not that different from Donald Trump's.

Planned Parenthood never forces any woman to have an abortion or to use birth control. They are there for the women who choose to do this, and these are just 2 services they make available to women who can also go to them for treatment for STDs, and other women's health issues. And is there really any advantage to black women or any other woman for that matter, to having more children than she wants to have? If having a brood of kids guarantees more money from welfare, then what positive impact does this have? Should poor unmarried black women, for instance, just keep having more children to supply cannon fodder for the violent conditions in the inner cities, which in turn provide inmates for the prison industry anxiously awaiting to incarcerate young black men? And it's not like middle class white females don't have abortions. The whole concept of planned parenthood is a woman's issue and the opposition to it is all about the Religious Right Wing Conservative culture of exercising control over women. Black militant males are the first to associate planned parenthood with genocide but obviously this argument pales in the face of the black on black crime that is rampant among the ranks of fatherless black youth who die by the gun in a delayed form of abortion.

A Catholic nun put the position of the pro-life zealots in great perspective when she said they are not pro-life, they are pro birth, because their presumptuous intrusion into women's lives ends the moment a baby is born. Where are these self-appointed do-gooders when it comes to the plight of the millions of abused and abandoned children crowding the rolls of DCFS, or leading miserable lives in foster homes? My personal feeling on this controversial subject have always been that motherhood should not be a punishment for an accident, but a privilege for a woman who decides to have a child. My input to the semantic discussions about when life begins is that an embryo/fetus may be a life form but it is not living until it breathes and is conscious of its surroundings. There are scientific arguments that support this view as well as the one that life begins at conception. The figures show that most abortions are done during the first trimester in the embryonic stage. People just can get the idea out of their heads that an embryo is a minature baby that will grow into a full sized one. Not so. It is a "parasitic" organism containing all the DNA necessary to become a human entity. Furthermore, to me, a woman's body is her sole domain and its nobody's business what she chooses to do in regard to bringing a child into this world. The father? In my opinion, his rights are secondary. The jury is still out on that. Planned Parenthood responded to the recent right-wing conservative propaganda machine attacks on it and refuted the histrionic arguments and half truths and accusations like the ones in the article posted above, by explaining that the benefits that accrue from the use of fetal tissue in scientific research outweigh the alternative of letting it go to waste. It's not a stretch to say that one woman's abortion can contribute to saving the life of another woman's sick child. Also, the sale of fetal tissue is not a new practice, and is not illegal. Planned Parenthood also said the woman having abortions were made aware of this. Democrats voted down the recent Republican attempt to stop funding Planned Parenthood, which is bound to become a hot button issue in the upcoming election. Planned Parenthood, although accused of originally practicing eugenics, has always been about a woman not having more children than she can manage, the rationale being that this is not fair to the other children a poor, over burdened mother is already trying to care for. (I know, there are anecdotal rebuttals to this, - extolling the virtues of big happy poor families.) It's so easy for people to say they are against abortion because it is "murder" or a form of genocide. It's like those who say they are against homosexuality because the bible says it's an abomination and that its type of sex is sodomy. It's not that simplistic. Ethics and morals and religion are all subjects open to debate. Gay people are what they are, and should not have to be judged. Abortion is, indeed, something that's between, a woman, a doctor, and her god. It should also be taken into consideration that if The Government can intrude on a woman's personal life and tell her she must have a baby, this is setting a precedent for it being authorized to intrude on her personal life and tell her must not have a baby.

Did they create their own jobs? Was there a lot of black industry in the south? Or did Tuskegee just provide a permanent work force for low level jobs during this era?

What I deduced about Booker T. Washington comes from references made to him in books i've read about other famous blacks. He seemed to have been not only an accomodationist but a supreme pragmatist, not optimistic about black equality ever coming into fruition, So the college he founded was a vocational one where students were urged to acquire skills in the agricultural sciences and fields of service. He also didn't seem to have a lot of faith in the morals of young blacks because of the stringent rules and strict curfews that were enforced, restricting their social lives to make sure there was no hanky panky going on. Attending the campus church was also mandatory. His goal was apparently to turn out god-fearing subservient graduates, who could earn a living at the only type of jobs available to Blacks.

I agree with a fellow FaceBooker when she asks "Does it strike you as odd that the disgraceful slaughter of a lion in Africa causes far more outrage in America than the daily lynchings of Americans of color?" Ironically, had this lion killed the hunter, excuses would've been made blaming the man for encroaching on the lion's turf, while explaining that this was just a case of a lion being a lion. Or is anybody ever outraged when lions kill each other, committing fur-on-fur crime. Too bad there's no such universal lamenting among human beings when a black person is murdered by a white cop - during the course of a racist just being a racist when he kills a black motorist for just being a black motorist. One thing for sure: Lion lives matter. Good thing I'm a Leo or I would really be pissed about this situation.

I watched the video snippet and listened to what Ta-Nehisi Coates had to say, and it was true. But is it profound or enlightening to anybody other than naive white people who might just include the editors at his publishing company. Are there any critical thinking black people who don't know that personal responsibility and virtue on their part does not trump racism and poverty?? Or does being twice as accomplished as a white rival even guarantee success. In reality, many high profile blacks have become multi-millionaires not by exhibiting personal responsibility but by simply having a talent or a skill that provides entertainment and diversion for white people. A famous quote by Proust says that "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" Could this be why the articulate and animated Ta'Nehisi Coates has catapulted to the ranks of an intellectual rock star? Because he simply looks at the ongoing problem of race with a new set of eyes, making his generation aware of what black elders have already figured out. It's interesting that Toni Morrison and Cornel West have butted heads over the validity of Coates' genius. Has Toni anointed him because he says what she wants to hear because what is familiar to her is what she wants to hear? Does Cornel feel threatened by this upstart's ideas, a frustration making him resort to style over substance diversionary tactics that consist of theoretical counterpoints? Am I missing something here? Or is the release of this new book much ado about nothing, comparable to the hulabaloo over Harper Lee's prequel to "To Kill A Mockingbird". My cynical reaction to so much of what is going on this silly world is not something I have to work at. It comes natural to me. Would I be bragging if I make claim to being a true iconoclast??

My final input on this subject is that woman not only adorn and embellish themselves to attract men, but - they do this to compete with and inspire the envy of other women. They are steady checking each other out,pricing each other's clothes, and grading each other's over-all appearance. They will wear high-priced stilletto heeled shoes that are killing their feet, not to seduce men but to impress other women. Yet, women are more inclined to overlook physical "flaws" than men are. A smart male with a good job has better luck with the opposite sex than his plain-Jane female counterpart. It's rough out there in the mix and it requires a lot of perserverance and savvy to cut through the BS. It's easy to prate about beauty only being skin deep, but in 2015, all bets are off. I've needed glasses since 8th grade and also have an overbite that had a slight effect on my eating and my smile. But the one natural asset that worked in my favor were my - dimples. Who'd have thought it? My husband.

May I again remind you Troy, that contact lenses are not about improving your vision so much as they are about replacing the glasses that people are too vain to wear. Crooked teeth are not an ailment, they are an impediment that has little to do with improving one‘s health. These options are “cosmetic” changes that apparently make people feel better about their appearance, and nobody ever criticizes women about them the way they chide African American ones who when it comes to their hair, are accused of "mimicking European standards of beauty imposed upon them" - the choice of words you use to advance your point. I could similarly put my spin on the situation and say that black women straighten their hair because, like all women in this country, they want to wear it in a popular American style. Why is it so much emphasis is put on self-acceptance but few have a problem with women wearing make-up, - something that isn’t natural. Whatever. I don’t think black women have an obligation to justify an alternative hair choice because they are not conceited enough to think they are perfect the way they are. You make it sound like hair is an extension of one’s psyche, and a session on the psychiatrist couch is in order to reveal why black women reject their locks, insisting that they have low self esteem because they want to conform to Caucasian standards. But actually, it’s as much about wanting to conform to popular standards. And incidentally, this can entail sistas "consciously" copying white women since they are who so many brothas are "unconsciously" attracted to. And it’s not as if what black women do their hair is a big deal. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. You can go to the drug store and buy a kit for about $7.00 and in no time at all with a minimal amount of fuss, tint or dye your hair to a shade that changes your natural color. Or is getting your hair permed a monumental undertaking for a black women. You can do it yourself or have a hair dresser do it. This treatment will last about 3 months and doesn’t call for anymore upkeep than an Afro, considering all of the things that women do to maintain this “natural” coif. Also you can buy synthetic hair extensions at a beauty supply store and attach them yourself.(it amuses me how braided extensions seem to get a pass, as if this expensive, time-consuming choice is an authentic style.) Wigs, of course, are not that expensive and are low maintenance. In its natural state, my hair is wavy and frizzy. I can simply wash it, put some pressing oil on it, and straighten it with a hot comb. When I used to do this, self-hate was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted my hair more manageable. When Afros became popular, I wore one because they were all the rage, not because this elevated my self-esteem. I can only speak for myself when it came to there being a connection between what was on my head and what was in my head. My hair was a part of my total look and this persona was a manifestation of my individuality. I never felt a need to apologize for not being Afro-centric. I was who I was. I dressed the way I pleased and did whatever I felt like doing with my hair, and this included hiding it under wigs. The only time my self esteem was affected was if I didn’t do well in school or didn’t move up on a job or didn‘t get a guy I had eyes for. Whatever the circumstances, I refused to let someone else define or shame me. And I don’t think I am that unusual. In the present, tresses are becoming a fashion accessory. I keep in mind that a woman's hair is "her crowing glory" and as a queen in her own right, she can do to it whatever makes her feel royal. When it comes to the root of her motivation, I'll leave the psycho-babble to those who think black women should adhere to the taste of their critics..

I don't.

"Naturally, I disagree, Troy. Losing weight for health issues is just one reason why women do it. Many do it to slim down their figures so they can wear fashionable clothes, something that is also an added incentive to the ones who do it for reasons of health. Braces are a cosmetic issue. You can eat with protruding crooked teeth but everybody wants that toothpaste grin because a perfect smile is an asset. And getting contacts as opposed to wearing glasses to improve your vision is comparable to straightening your "kinky" hair. If a woman thinks she looks more glamorous without the encumbrance of glasses, and with the enhancement of long silky hair and arched eyebrows, this is not a sin. That's her prerogative.. "Vanity, thy name is woman!" Self-esteem comes in many forms. Where is it written that you have to be satisfied with your natural appearance if it doesn't prove to be an asset in the sphere where you function. Ignorance is a natural state but going to college to acquire knowledge and skills so you can better navigate through life, is not a case of self hate; it's a practical decision and could even have something to do with self love. I think this applies when it comes to do-overs, too. My point is that self-hate is a label that is placed on people so they can be categorized and dismissed. If a person chooses to adjust to the social turf where they compete, then self-appointed arbitrators need to butt out. All people are exploited in every area of their life. When black men give up the extravagant consumption of things that advertise their status and polish their image, then I'll encourage sisters to do likewise. In the meantime, I say: "do your own thing, girlfriend; it's your life".

Do what??????

To me, the whole Sandra Bland situation was a perfect storm. A racist cop, and an agitated black woman cross paths and an irresistible force met an immovable object. Gray clouds gathered and lightning eventually struck. The result was inevitable. Autopsy results have been released backing up claims of suicide all of which has served to escalate matters. Unfortunately, emotion does not influence justice which is why Sandra died in vain. That's how it goes in the land of the free white person and the brave black one. Ice-T famously appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, wearing a police uniform, - an affront to the brave boys in blue, considering he rapped about killing cops. Where is he now? A member of The Establishment , co-starring on a TV show playing a character who is on the side of law enforcement. That's how it goes in the land where profit rules. Cops complain how everybody hates the police until they need them. I've never been in a situation when they weren't called when any kind of a crime was committed. That's the Catch-22 of life in "Chiraq" territory.

Aside from the fact that you are engaging in broad generalizations, all ethnic groups stereotype each other. In a perfect world things would be different but this not being the case, we will all continue to associate certain things with certain nationalities.

If people are not satisfied with how they look, then who is to say that they can't change their appearance if they so chose?? We are urged to change our personality flaws to make us better persons and if aspiring to a "be-all-you-can-be" vision of themselves motivates people to do what makes them feel better, then I say so be it. All the judgmental people who want to lecture about self-hate and low self-esteem need to chill. Should an obese person not try to lose weight? Should a person with acne not try to clear up their skin? Should a person with protruding crooked teeth not get braces? Should a extremely myopic person not wear contacts. And why is it any more of a crime for a black female to want long silly hair extensions as opposed to the coarse synthetic fiber that is woven into the dread locks so favored by other black people who are always yapping about racial pride. One is no more of an affectation than the other. If a dark person wants to lighten their skin and or a white person wants to tan theirs, then it's nobody else's business and they shouldn't have to justify why they decide to do this. We should be more interested in what's in a person mind instead of what's on their head, less critical of their complexions and more intrigued by the complexity of their individuality. Everybody is entitled to choose their way of competing and coping in a world that in spite all of its noble rhetoric condemning superficiality, is the very essence of it.

Words are weapons. But actions speak louder than words and one picture is worth a thousand words. There's a message hidden right before our eyes in these old adages. Reading between the lines and understanding the impact of what is not said is the beginning of wisdom. Your ZEN thought for the day. LOL

Dear Rickey So what else is new? Your long rambling rant doesn't educate, it simply recycles all the arguments that black activists from both the left and the right political spectrum have been advancing for years. The fact that your words resonate with Akia indicates that your audience is restricted to unenlightened Millenials unfamiliar with what veterans of the ongoing struggle already know. But the fact that you are not an original thinker is not a bad thing. It just means the torch has been passed. Be advised, however, that talk is cheap and stating the problem is one thing. But if this was all it took, the black race would've achieved equality in America long ago. Life is not that simple.