Not every Black man and woman is going to become conscious, be down with the uplift of our people as a whole, or are even interested in being around other Black people in camaraderie. If you are an advocate of the uplift of our people, you have to recognize this truth:

Skin color does not an ally make.

Just because a person shares our skin color doesn’t mean that person shares our ideals.

The founder of the Black Conscious Movement, Stephen Biko, writes: Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude. It is attitude and action, not pigmentation, that determines who is a real asset to the community – and who is an adversary.

There are amongst us Blacks who will kill, insult, and wage war against another Black while refusing to battle a white man on the same terms. I love shows like The Boondocks because even though they parody Black behavior, there is some underlying truth that addresses real, well known problems…like Nigga Moments. If you don’t know what I am talking about, here is a short clip.

Yea, this ish is hilarious to me. But on a serious point; its not what is said in these little nigga moments, its not the circumstances, it’s the underlying spirit.

We Are Our Own Worst Enemy

I will be doing a post on our “foreign” enemies and their atrocities later, but the focus of this post are our enemies within. Every Black man and woman knows the above statement to be a fact; that we are our own worst enemy. Instead of building on that statement, let me give you some historical examples of that statement:

Denmark Vesey was a field negro that planned what would have been the largest slave revolt in the history of revolts (next to the successful Haitian Revolution) in 1820. This revolt involved damn near 9,000 slaves and even a handful of white abolitionists. The plot would have been successful if not for two Black slaves opposed to Vesey’s scheme leaked the plot.

In 1965, The WATTS Writers workshop was the starting ground for artists like Quincy Jones and the poetry group The Watts Prophets, and was a beacon for positive Black talent in the hood…until it was burned down by Darthard Perry, a Black FBI informant.

Huey P. Newton co-created the Black Panther Party, a shining example of Black militancy and a freedom fighter in his own right. He would still be with us if he hadn’t been shot in the face by a Black man. (Authors note: and no, he didn’t die during a “crack deal gone bad”. You really believe everything you hear from the people that brought you COINTELPRO?)

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X created the Organization of African American Unity, designed to unify the efforts of the civil rights movement across religious denominations. He had met with African leaders to develop a Pan-African movement that spanned across continents, kinda like what Marcus Garvey did. How much good work could Malcolm’s OAAU done had he not been shot by Black men?

And speaking of Marcus Garvey, let me drop this quote on you: “Most of the trouble I have had in advancing the cause of the race has come from Negroes.” If you want something more recent, Tupac said it best in Only God Can Judge Me: “They say it’s the white man I should fear, but its my own kind doin all the killing here”

Look, before I go on, I should say that I don’t write posts like this to be divisive…don’t come at me with that argument. I write posts like this for the exact opposite reason, because if we cant recognize that we have agents provocateur and people with ill intentions in our midst, then we will never succeed in unification. How can we come together with enemies in our midst bent on our division and destruction? These enemies of the sate will kill our leadership and our efforts before we so much as start to rise.

No more Uncle Toms in China

I was listening to a Malcolm X speech entitled Message to the Grass Roots where he mentioned Chairman Mao Zedong and the Red Revolution in China.

“The Chinese Revolution —— they wanted land. They threw the British out, along with the Uncle Tom Chinese. Yeah, they did. They set a good example…When I was in prison, I read an article in Life magazine showing a little Chinese girl, nine years old; her father was on his hands and knees and she was pulling the trigger ’cause he was an Uncle Tom Chinaman, When they had the revolution over there, they took a whole generation of Uncle Toms —— just wiped them out. And within ten years that little girl become a full—grown woman. No more Toms in China. And today it’s one of the toughest, roughest, most feared countries on this earth —— by the white man.”

Its been half a century since those words were spoken, and China still stands unified. It took revolution – Chinese purging itself of Uncle Toms – to get the job done. The Chinese people had to starve for a time, work for the collective good for a time, and commit themselves to a fixed vision before they could realize the position they have today, as one of the “toughest, roughest, most feared countries on this earth by the white man”. If you look at China today, you see one unified country rooted in a unified social and political movement. Most Americans don’t remember the period of intense revolution and civil war, led by Chairman Mao Zedong (whose picture still hangs above Tienanmen Square 40 years after his death) that China had to endure to reach this point.

That is exactly what needs to happen for us to realize anything in this day and age. First, we must have land of our own. Have we forgotten that reparations are still due to us? But rather than fighting for a simple monetary “payout”, we should be demanding our “40 acres” in the form of a southern state, say, Georgia. There we can build our economy, leverage our resources, raise our generations, conduct commerce with the U.S. and other countries on our own strength as a sovereign nation. In the midst of that, we purge ourselves of those who cant let go of the self destructive and counter-unification mindsets.

You will hear some Blacks criticize the reparations movement as a fight that cant be won, but what about the hundreds of thousands of Jews, Native Americans, and Japanese who have received their due? Are they so quick to surrender and eat it as a loss? How can those Blacks call themselves freedom fighters if they wont stand and fight for something that they not only deserve, but were promised?

Blacks criticize the notion of us being awarded land, but what about the thousands of Native Americans that are sovereign on their reservations? What about the Haitians, who seized control of what was rightfully theirs? What about the Israelites who, even as Malcolm X was speaking, fought for and won their own country? What about The Zimbabweans who stand alone on a continent full of puppet states, who fought for and won control of their land and resources?

Its possible and necessary for us to receive what is due to us.

You will hear Blacks criticize each other all the time as soon as the issue of buying black owned and operated or pooling money and resources comes up, but there really is no other way. Look at it like this – If you try to throw a few of your measly dollars at, say, funding a Conscious Hip Hop concert, you will put on a sorry show. But with me, you, him, her, and them investing in the project – pooling our resources together – now you have something that can set the example for future shows. And with the profits from that project, bigger and bigger projects can be funded.

Its possible and necessary to build on the strength of Black owned businesses and the power of our economic collective! Go back and read my article on the subject right here: Building a Black Cooperative Empire

Yall Should All Get Lynched

My man NY Oil made a very controversial and popular song called Ya’ll Should All Get Lynched, and a few lyrics jumped out at me that drive the point of the article home:

“Peoples floated for a week on New Orleans streets and only Kanye West wasn’t scared to speak
Which is deep, because ghetto niggas is quick to beef
With otha niggas they think they can beat…
Brother home from college, oh that nigga aint shit
Nigga come home from jail and yall all on his dick”

I think this song speaks to the overall spirit of this article: for every step that we attempt to take forward, there will be nay-sayers and stealth destroyers that will attempt to destroy our efforts. They should, indeed, all be lynched.

We are at a critical time in Black American history. The consciousness of our people as a whole is gaining momentum, Black scholars are leading efforts to bring true Black history to light, and media outlets like Blog Talk Radio are being dominated by a new generation of Black thinkers. This is a decisive era, we can finally achieve what Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Huey P. failed to achieve, but part of our strategy has to be identifying our enemies, both “foreign and domestic”.

To those people who make the excuse that “calling somebody an enemy only adds to our division as a people”, I would say that only a fool would let their enemies circulate in their midst, and only a coward would fail to point out, call out, and flush out evil within their ranks!

Understand that enemies do exist within our own race, and they DO NOT have a live and let live mentality. They are the ones that are divisive. They are the ones that kill. They are the ones that disrupt, and even actively fight against progress. They are the ones that invented the Nigga moment. They are the enemies of the state of Black America.