NAJEE ALI - AND THE WRITING ON THE WALL

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

NAJEE ALI  

AND THE WRITING ON THE WALL
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Tim, I've known you for years, so I'm shocked to hear you say that Najee Ali has too much baggage to run for office. I realize there was no animosity in your comment and you’re simply stating an opinion, but I beg to differ.
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I realize that Najee has some issues in his past, but I’ve had issues of my own, so I look at those issues a little differently than most. I’m the son of a lifelong drug dealer, and between the ages of 12 and 19 years old I spent more time going in and out of jail than I did on the street. If it hadn't been for a Sgt. Foster, a White bruiser of a cop right out of central casting, my life might have been entirely different. Foster, who busted me for the first time when I was only12 years old followed my budding criminal career when he was a juvenile officer, and he continued to harass me as he moved up the ranks – first he used to harass me on the street himself when he was a street cop, and after he moved up the ranks he had his subordinates harassing me. 
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At the time I didn't know why he focused in on me, but after looking back upon it, I think he was just fascinated by me because of my father, Mac, and the fact  that I was such a confirmed street urchin at such an early age. At 12 years old I was dealing single joints at Carver Jr. High School in the 7th grade. I walked through the door dealing, and that was where I first came into contact with Foster. One of his officers busted me at school. I overheard him and one of the other cops sorta jokin' about it. I heard one cop say, "I couldn't believe it! This kid's up there at the school getting rich dealing hand over fist. We busted him with 60 joints!" They only busted me because they caught one of the other kids getting high and he snitched on me.
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As I got older Foster used to try to embarrass me on the block. He once left a message for me on the street when I was about 16 telling the fellas to tell

MY FATHER, MAC, AND BROTHER, VIRGIL, IN 1966

me if I didn't have my ass up at the police station by 9 a.m. the next morning he was gonna beat my ass. The fellas got a big kick out of that. The way they related it was, Foster was up here lookin' for you, and he said, "If you don't arrest your own ass and report to jail by 9 a.m. in the morning, you ain't gon' have a ass by noon."  I didn't like the way he was embarrassing me, but you know what - I was up there at the police station at 9 a.m. - on the dot. He also once warned me that if I didn’t get my brains blown out first, I was gonna to end up spending the rest of my life in prison next to my dad. He told me that I was too young to be trying to hangout with my father's crew. But what he didn't know was, I wasn't hanging out, they were taking care of me while my father was away. They were there to keep my youthful stupidity in check. My father knew every move I made, and was able to block many of them (THE HUSTLERS).
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This went on all throughout my teenage years - when I was on the street. Then when I was 19 years old (an adult), I ended up getting busted for a very serious drug charge, involving the possession of a large quantity of heroin, Seconal, and Mollies for sale. Needless to say, I lost my case, so when I showed up at court for sentencing, with my record, I was prepared to go away for a long, long time. And then Foster popped up in court. I thought he came to gloat, because by that time he was a captain and the commanding officer of 77 Division, and I didn’t even get busted in his jurisdiction.
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So as I was waiting to be sent to the joint, when my case came up, Foster and the judge took me into the judge’s chambers and Foster started telling the judge that I wasn’t really a criminal, I was just stupid. When I started to protest about him calling me stupid, he told me to shut up, and started telling the judge about my father (who had spent a lot of time in San Quentin) and how he busted me with a half can of weed when I was 12 years old.
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When he was done, the judge (who was a former Marine Corps officer) offered me a deal. He told me he would hold my current conviction in abeyance and throw it out, and expunge my entire juvenile record, if I agreed to go into the Marine Corps and I came out with an honorable discharge. And of course, I jumped at it, because it meant that instead of having to catch the “Grey Goose” to the joint, I could go home and get high. But unbeknownst to me, that was the moment that completely changed my life. It changed a lot of lives.
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As a direct result of that one moment in my life, I ended up going into the Marine Corps, getting an education (when I went to court I was a high school dropout), and as promised, when I got out I went before the court and that same judge expunged my record. So my life had completely changed. I was clean as a White fish. Thereafter, I married my late wife, Val, and we ended up having Kai and Lil' Eric. But I stayed in contact with Foster, and even used to go up to the 77th Div. and visit him from time to time. Then after I graduated from college he suggested that I might want to consider a career with the LAPD, and I was considering it, until Val asked me one simple question - "That sounds like a plan, but where are you gon' sleep when you get off?" So that abruptly ended that prospect. 

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ERIC JR.

But the most amazing irony of all was that my son, Eric Jr., who grew up listening to all these stories ended up becoming a Drug Enforcement agent in Washington State, and the reason for that was very simple – because he was on a mission. He knew my story, and the story of his grandfather, so he had an up-close and personal understanding of what drugs were doing to the Black community. But he didn't want to be a street cop, busting people who were just struggling to survive, he wanted to go after the people at the top of the food chain, so he went into the DEA.
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Eric knew that if it hadn’t been for Foster, and that one moment that he stood up for me in court, neither he, nor his sister, Kai, would have ever been born, because I would have been in the joint - or at least, that's the way I like to see it, because as a writer I tend to be on the melodramatic side. But in actuality, he might have just closed his eye and threw a dart at a dartboard and hit DEA instead of FBI or the Secret Service (who he used to work with in the military as an Air Force Raven). But he did want to be a federal agent, because he was a big Buck Rodgers fan as a kid.
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Capt. Foster lived to see Eric enter the DEA Academy, but he died just one month before Eric graduated and received his credentials as an agent. I remember as I was sitting there during the ceremony how much I wished Foster had lived just a little longer, because I'm sure he would have flown across the country to attend the ceremony, sick or not, because he would have known he was the reason we were there. 

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While I recognize that it's always a bad idea for a writer to write about himself, I thought I'd point out my own situation in order to relate it to Najee Ali. Although I've had my scrapes with the law, I think I would have made a much better cop than someone who didn't have a record because they grew up on a chicken farm in the boonies, because I've lived the life, and the same is true of Najee Ali.
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Thus, the little scrapes that Najee has had with the law means absolutely nothing to me, and it says absolutely nothing about who he is as a man – except, like me and my son, he has a little more insight into the struggles and hardships attendant to being a Black man in America - and that's an asset, not a liability.
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So we should never say what a brother or sister, "can't do." There's nothing in life that we can't do if we set our minds to it. What some may call Najee's "baggage", I call specialized knowledge. The adversities that he's endured in life only serves to make him more rather than less. A brother like Najee doesn’t have to speculate about the mindset of a young Crip or Blood, because he’s been there. So he's exactly the kind of brother that we need in office - someone who knows both sides of the street; who understands both our legitimate, and, underground culture. That's valuable knowledge that he'll be able to apply to whatever path in life he chooses to pursue. Life is not about what a Black person can or can’t do, life is about what we choose to do.
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So we've got to learn to stop selling ourselves short, and trying to define ourselves by the White man's standards, because the White man can't live up to the standards he sets for us himself. Donald Trump commits more crimes in one weekend than Najee has committed in his entire life. Think about it, Tim. Many people would have had something negative to say about you when you applied for the LAPD, but I'm sure that once you got in the organization you found that very few were living up to the standards that they demanded that you adhere to. Of course, I wasn't in your squad room, but I can make that claim blindly, because that's the life of a Black person in America, and over the centuries Black people have been indoctrinate into thinking of themselves just like White folks do - that somehow, we just don't measure up. 
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But Black people have got to learn to see though that game, because we do measure up - in fact, we more than measure up. That's exactly the problem that they have with us. They know that what we casually write-off as "soul", is nothing less than intellectual brilliance straining to be unleashed. We're the only ones who don't realize that. The White man learned that about us during slavery, and he's been obsessively concerned with that knowledge ever since. 
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When the White man first brought us over here in 1619, he thought he was merely importing a beast of burden. But as we began to adapt to his culture, he was shocked to find that our intellectual creativity was boundless, and we constituted a clear and present threat to his assumption of superiority. That’s why he passed laws making it illegal to teach Black people to read and write. He began to recognize that the very same intellectual creativity that allowed us to become masters in music and the arts, could also be applied to math, science, engineering, and politics. That recognition is what causes him to hate us so intensely. Thus, his racist attitudes toward us are not grounded in hatred alone, they're also grounded in fear.
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White bigots have been absolutely amazed by the power of Black intellect.

After suffering for generations from the ravages of smallpox that alluded all of his "great" medical minds and institutions of higher learning, an African slave introduced the knowledge of inoculation into society. That all but wiped out not only smallpox, but many other diseases in society. And in spite of their campaign to try to keep Black people uneducated, after the Civil War former slaves walked right out of the fields into the halls of congress. In addition, Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, not only became a valued confidant of President Lincoln, but became celebrated as one of the most sought-after lecturer and intellectual of his time. He was also one of the first intellectuals to address the issue of equal rights for women. He was slated to appear at a women's rights conference the day he died - and at the time of his death he lived in a mansion on a hill that looked down upon the people who had formerly enslaved him.
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So White supremacists tried a different tact to limit Black people that came to be known as Jim Crow, a tactic that continues to this day. Knowing that a man can never rise above what he thinks of himself, the Jim Crow era was dedicated to a campaign of making the Black man think less of himself. 
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They used two methods to promote that campaign. First, they did everything in their power to convince the Black man that he was inferior; and second, they placed stern restrictions on the activities Black people were allowed to engage in other than singing and dancing, and then they rewarded us for excelling in those areas, thus, outlining “our place” in society. That’s why, to this day, many Black people have a hostility towards the pursuit of knowledge. We tend to say of an accomplished Black man with high self-esteem that “He’s bougie. He thinks he’s White.”, as though accomplishment and high self-esteem are limited to White folks. That’s why to this day, many Black people shun the pursuit of knowledge and focus much of their attention on their ability to sing and dance. We’ve been distracted to the point that many of us consider that “our place”.  We’ve been convinced that thinking "is a White thang."
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And I’m no exception. Ever since I was a child I’ve always liked to scribble out my thoughts. Before I could write, I used to draw my thoughts in pictures. I don’t know why, I've just always liked seeing my thoughts on paper. Then in my early twenties, after I got married, my late wife told me, “You, know, you’re not bad at this. You need to make this your thing.” I remember it like it was yesterday. I told her, “Sittin’ around tryin’ to write is for White boys.” Val was an Angela Davis-type sister at the time, so she just looked at me and said, “Man, you’re crazy. Do you think White folks are the only ones who have something to say? Go tell that shit to James Baldwin.” And she was right. So when I say we’ve been brainwashed over the years, I'm including myself. 
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We often use the word “brainwashed” as a pejorative term, but you don’t have to be dumb to be brainwashed. We’re all brainwashed to some extent in some area of knowledge. Brainwashing, or indoctrination, can be a subtle thing. It’s merely an attitude that we’ve accepted as true without taking the time to think it through. Like the belief that many of us accept that Jesus, who was born in the desert, was a blue eyed Scandinavian with blond hair. If that had been true they wouldn't have had to crucify him, he would have died of heat stroke, but many of us have been brainwashed into believing that nonsense. There are also a lot of us who still believe in walkin' dead men and talkin' snakes, because the White man taught it to us and we've never stopped to think it through.
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So with regard to Najee, his script is still playing itself out, and we have no idea where it's going to lead – he has no idea where it’s going to lead. At this point he doesn't see himself as a politician, because he's a humble brother, and he probably harbors a preconceived idea of what it means to be a politician and hasn’t bothered to take the time to fully think through the ramifications of what he’s currently doing. But the fact is, he’s already a politician, he's just not getting paid, and doesn’t have an office with his name on the door. But he'll come around, and if I have my way, I'm gonna help him to do that.
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We need to encourage talented brothers like Najee and not try to diminish them with negativity – and many of us tend to do just that. As I pointed out in a previous piece, although we often fail to recognize it, many Black people contracted a serious mental disorder during slavery, and it's been passed down through the generations over the years. It entails an innate distrust and disdain of our own people, a lack of focus, a seeming inability to prioritize, and the tendency to be disagreeable and hostile toward anyone who challenges the status quo. That attitude makes it next to impossible for Black people to come together and organize to improve our condition - and it also serves to insure the stability of this White supremacist system. So the White man has done his job well. He's successfully perpetuated self-hatred among a vulnerable percentage of dumb and weak-minded Black people - far from all, but more than enough to sabotage Black progress.

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Therefore, for exactly that reason, and regardless of what he says now, I'm going to keep on pushing Najee to formally run for office. Then, if he's elected, I'm going to continue to push him to run for even higher office, and to hire other talented brothers and sisters to help him carry out his mission. That’s the way a culture, and a people, move forward.

When Barack Obama was hangin' out on the block smokin' weed, who would have predicted that he would someday become a Harvard scholar and one of our greatest presidents? Very few, I assure you. But he did it. Presidential scholars voted him the 8th greatest president in American history -and he just left office, so his reputation is still growing, yet, they've already placed that brother up there among the founding fathers. Thus, Barack Obama is a living, breathing example of what we represent as a people. But as hard as it is to believe, we still have Black idiots running around trying to badmouth him because he wasn't Santa Claus. He was President Obama, not King Obama. It wasn't his job to go from house to house handing out gifts. His job was to create an environment conducive to our being able to go out and earn our own gifts - and the record will show that he did just that.
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Donald Trump and his band of bigots aren't obsessed with Obama's legacy for nothing. They clearly see in Barack Obama the threat that we represent to White supremacy. But we've been so brainwashed over the centuries that we don't recognize our own potential, and I'm convinced that's the case with Najee Ali. Some of our people badmouth him because they see him as just another “regular” like themselves. So they say to themselves, "Who is he to think he's good enough to hold office?" But any person who holds that attitude is only betraying what they think of themselves. Why shouldn’t a person like themselves hold office? Don’t they consider themselves capable of competence and worthy of trust? That attitude is a perfect example of centuries of brainwashing hard at work.
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So, I decided to expand on my original comment and save it as this blog so it'll pop up every time someone looks up Najee Ali on Goggle. And I guarantee you that I'll be presenting it to Najee (or maybe I should say, Representative Ali) at some later date. You can mark my word on that, because I’m a product of the street myself, and I see the writing on the wall.
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Thank you, Val.
Rest in peace, baby. 
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Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com

BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.