BLACK PEOPLE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING PLAYED, IN A VERY DANGEROUS GAME

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

BLACK PEOPLE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF BEING PLAYED, IN A VERY DANGEROUS GAME
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Black people are in the process of being demonized and setup in a very dangerous way.  Yes, we've always been demonized, demeaned, and disparaged, but this time it's different, and the accusations are much more dangerous and malevolent. This time we're being accused of being anti-American terrorists who are bent on bringing down America, so we shouldn't take it lightly.  I've said this before, and I thought the potential danger in this situation would be both alarming and obvious to all, but I've noticed that a handful of very naive Black people are fluffing it off as meaningless, so I thought it was worth revisiting.

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At this point the focus is on Black Lives Matter (BLM).  Due to the thoughtless antics of a few unthinking individuals in the name of the organization, they've made BLM an easy target.  So BLM needs to restructure their organization to require authorization to speak on behalf of the organization, keep tight control over any activities that take place in their name, and remain vigilant in weeding out any individual(s) who engage in any kind of stupid activity in their name, because the conservative establishment is slowing beginning to put the subliminal message in America's mind that BLM is not a social justice organization, but a terrorist organization, and they have absolutely no hesitation in infiltrating the group with plants and Judas goats to help them make that jacket stick, and if it gains traction, Black people as a whole are in trouble.

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Black conservative sheriff,  David Clarke, of Milwaukee says, "Black Lives Matter will join forces with Islamic State (ISIS) to bring down our republic."  Now, Huffington Post reports that Fox News has suggested that BLM was responsible for the murder of  Deputy Darren Goforth of Harris County, Texas. The article reads in part:
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"Fox News ran an onscreen banner during Monday night's episode of "Fox & Friends" referring to the Black Lives Matter movement as a "murder movement," and one Fox host wondered why the movement wasn't labeled a hate group.

"'Fox & Friends' co-host Brian Kilmeade was speaking with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke about the death of Deputy Darren Goforth of Harris County, Texas, who was fatally shot while pumping gas in a Houston suburb on Friday night. Goforth was white, and the man who police believe killed him, Shannon Miles, is black.

"There is no evidence that Miles has any connection to the Black Lives Matter movement, but the "Fox & Friends" segment made a point to strongly imply that Black Lives Matter was at fault for Goforth’s death."  

And conservatives are far from done. That same Black conservative sheriff, David Clarke, has already gone on to say, "Blacks Sell Drugs' Because They Are 'Lazy' And 'Morally Bankrupt." And now it turns out that we have a White sheriff in Florida, David Morgan, saying, “We have unfortunately, in America, embraced a thug culture.  One that aggrandizes, again, foul language, shooting cops, abusing women and if you think those things do not have an effect on our children you need to get a grip!”

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They are gradually conflating the Black community with terrorism and anti-Americanism. So Black people need to wake up!  But when I initially reported this, one Black person was so naive as to try to ridicule the position I'm putting forward here as paranoid. He laughed and said, "People aren't going to pay any attention to that discredited Black sheriff."  But he's dead wrong, and history has repeatedly demonstrated that fact. 

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The Republican Party has made repeating lies until they gain traction a way of life - Fox News has made that concept its primary business model, and the entire advertising industry is based on the premise that if you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.  But it goes farther than that. As a simple rule of thumb, one should never make the foolish mistake of assuming what an adversary WON'T do. When you're dealing with an adversary, you should ALWAYS assume the very worst - and since the 2016 election is looming, with the change in the nation's demographics, and GOP's history of dirty politics, we should DEFINITELY expect the very worst.

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SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT THIS?  

The Black community must stop allowing itself to become such an easy target for demonization.  In the short term we should firmly deny the allegation and demand concrete evidence of the sheriff's dangerous, malevolent. and unsubstantiated allegation. If clear evidence is not provided, we should demand the sheriff's recall, explore civil litigation against him, and declare him an enemy of the Black community. We Should also follow the exact same procedure against any media person or organization who suggests such a thing.
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In this political environment accusing ANYONE of being a terrorist without concrete evidence to substantiate the claim should be declared a hate crime, because the consequences of such an accusation can be so dire - including the suspension of all of Constitutional rights, arrest and imprisonment without any kind of due process or trial, or worse. That may seem to be a remote possibility now, but if one of the clown bus of right-wing Republican reactionaries should win the 2016 Presidential election, they will control all three branches of government, and these people have no sense of limits. So we should make it publicly clear to all Black people that anyone who does anything stupid to lend credibility to this allegation is placing the entire Black community in serious jeopardy.  In short, the Black community needs to stop sitting on its hands, and be proactive in aggressively addressing this issue.  
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And now that this charge has been floated, this is going to be an ongoing concern, so it's important for the Black community to start taking steps right now to address our cultural mores and the infrastructure within our community. We must insure that we can't be defined by the most dysfunctional people in our community, and we must also take steps to insure that dysfunction is not rewarded by, or in, the community.

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IS HIP HOP BEING USED BY THE ESTABLISHMENT TO DEMONIZE THE BLACK COMMUNITY?

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While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the hip hop genre as an art form, it's literally drenched in people who are getting rich by producing 10 minute commercials that's being beamed all over America - and throughout the world - referring to the very womb of the Black culture as bitches and hoes. Many also take macho and adolescent pride in declaring themselves gangsters and are routinely promoting the use of drugs and violence. The Black community has got to send a message to these people - ignorance and dysfunction are neither cool, nor manly; it only lends comfort and assistance to an enemy who's out to destroy the Black community. And the way to send that message is to boycott any artist who engages in such stupidity, and also boycott any record company, radio or television station, or magazine, and their sponsors, who promote this self-destructive idiocy. In addition, as Black parents, we must educate our children and be firm in forbidding such content from being played in our homes.
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MUSIC AWARD SHOWS 

The community must also send a message to the producers, broadcasters, and sponsors of music award shows, and let them know in no unequivocal terms that we're tired of seeing the same entertainers swaggering across the stage and being rewarded for spewing a false image of Black people as just a group of dysfunctional idiots. We don't want to see such people at the Grammys, or any other award shows, and we must put our $1.1 trillion in Black spending power to work in backing up that demand.

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We should also use our dollars to encourage Black award shows, such as the Soul Train Awards, to convert their format from music awards, to giving out awards for Black excellence in the community. Instead of continually giving out awards to the same old swaggering entertainers, they should use entertainers to entertain, and to PRESENT the awards to young Black scholars, and people who have contributed to the community, and who have demonstrated Black excellence. Such programs would serve three purposes - first, it would send a message to Black youth that excellence is what is cool, not dysfunction; secondly, it would beam the message around the world that the Black community is focused on growth and excellence, not terrorism; and finally, it would educate the world on the kind of excellence to be found in the Black community.

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BLACK CHURCHES   

The Black church has traditionally been a place where the Black community has organized to move itself forward.  In the past the Black church recognized that its mission was much more complex than to simply have a preacher come in and do a spoken-word concert (for 10% of our earnings) every Sunday on how to get into Heaven. Jesus wasn't just giving spoken-word concerts about the joys of Heaven, he was also concerned with the plight of the people while they're here on Earth. When Jesus spoke, he expected his disciples to LIVE his words, not just preach and pray:
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"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues [churches] and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward . . ." Matthew 6:1-34 

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"IF YE WERE ABRAHAM'S CHILDREN, YE WOULD DO THE WORKS OF ABRAHAM"
John 8: 39

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REV. CREFLO DOLLAR'S HOME

So we must re-organize our churches, and re-traditionalize their mission to focus on enhancing the people's lives, as oppose to making individual preachers rich. Thus, if your preacher is doing better than the people in the community that surrounds your church, you're either attending the wrong church, or the right church with the wrong preacher. So we must re-organize our churches and put preachers on a fixed salary, and then use the billions of dollars in tithes that flow into the various Black churches every Sunday to elevate the community.

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The Black churches in every community should come together to form a consortium. Thereafter, they should pool the tithes they're collecting every Sunday to purchase businesses to provide jobs for our young people that pay a living wage, and purchase property to provide affordable housing in the community. The entire community should also do it's part. If everyone in the community was encouraged to invest just $10 a month into the consortium, they could build a portfolio by indicating what businesses in the community they wanted their investment to go to. That could reap great dividends - the people would, literally, be investing in their own community. That would also encourage the community to patronize it's own businesses, and it would provide the consortium the revenue to invest in any venture that it chose to pursue. Eventually, Black consortiums across the country could join forces and, essentially, become, Black People, Inc.
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The churches should also be open 7 days a week to provide affordable childcare for working mothers. Then they could also hire unemployed mothers to help in the daycare centers.  The churches should also utilize the knowledge and expertise of retired professionals in their congregations to help mentor and instruct the people in the community. And of course, there should be a citizens committee to oversee the operation of the various businesses (not the preachers), and it should require multiple signatures to withdraw any funds from the bank for any reason - and once again, to ensure that the funds are being used most efficiently, preachers should be placed on fixed salaries instead of being allowed to get rich at the expense of the community. Jesus was not a wealthy man, so why should any preacher be?
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That's how we reform our community. We educate the community to give excellence and knowledge priority over dysfunction, and give the young people within it a sense of pride, an opportunity to put money in their pockets, and to build credit and buy new cars. We've got to teach them how the game is played, and give them hope and confidence in their future.
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If we are proactive in doing these things, then when the world looks upon the Black community, they won't see a "thug culture" and budding terrorists, they'll see a community with the backbone and political clout to back up our demands, and a community filled with conscientious, intelligent, and knowledgeable people who are on the rise. 

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Eric L. Wattree 

wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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An Ox That Needs To Be Gored - Black Preachers

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

An Ox That Needs To Be Gored - Black Preachers
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Where are the Black Churches, and where are all of the millions of dollars in tithes they're collecting every Sunday going? Black preachers do a great job of giving inspirational speeches, and telling us to "forgive, forget, and put all of the atrocities committed against us in God's Hands," but we've been doing that for over 400 years, and the same kind of things keep happening to us. So it seems to me that, that constitutes a message from God - that he helps those who help themselves. So, Reverend, while quivering voices and inspirational speeches may be soothing, we can save those spoken word concerts for Sunday morning. The burning question that's begging to be asked is, what are you doing to help provide a better life for God's Children Monday thru Saturday when the collection plates are stacked in the corner?  That's the question the Lord would ask. 
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God did his part when he gave us common sense. Now it's our job to use it, and recognize that the very same people who are victimizing us are the ones who taught us to moan, quiver, and shout, while they had us tied up next to the mules. That's what kept us docile, easily manipulated, and compliant ("God told me to tell you this."), and many Black preachers are using the very same tactic against their own people, and for the same reason - to enrich themselves. Yet, if that's what we've become accustomed to, there's plenty of time for shouting and quivering oratory on Sunday. But reverend, the relevant question is this - what are you doing OTHER than quivering and shouting to help the community Monday thru Saturday? I think that's what the Lord would ask.
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The Black churches in every community should come together to form a consortium. Thereafter, they should pool the tithes they're collecting every Sunday to purchase businesses to provide jobs for our young people that pay a living wage, and purchase property to provide affordable housing in the community. The churches should be open 7 days a week to provide affordable childcare for working mothers. Then they could also hire unemployed mothers to help in the daycare centers. They could utilize the retired professionals in their congregations to help mentor and instruct the people in the community.  And of course, there should be a citizens committee to oversee the operation of the various businesses, and it should require multiple signatures to withdraw any funds from the bank for any reason. And finally, to ensure that the funds are being used most efficiently, preachers should be placed on salaries instead of being allowed to get rich at the expense of the community. Jesus was not a wealthy man, so why should any preacher be?
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That would go a long way toward relieving the suffering in the Black community. But I'm sure that most preachers would be totally against such a plan (especially the salary part), and the rest of the plan would be much too much trouble, because it would require them having to work more than one day a week.
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The Black community has spoiled its preachers. When the community needs something the preacher will tell them to take it to the Lord in prayer, but when the preacher needs something, he comes to us. So the community must start demanding more of these preachers. Just as it's the preacher's job to keep us on the path of righteousness, it's our job to do the same with them.

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"IF YE WERE ABRAHAM'S CHILDREN, YE WOULD DO THE WORKS OF ABRAHAM"

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As I drive through the Black community and see the magnificent "houses of God" towering over the community in the midst of poverty, social need, and in some cases, squalor all around them, I can't help but wonder how many of them are really doing God's work.
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When I look at those resplendent edifices, it takes me back to a little storefront church on a 108th and Juniper in Watts, where my grandmother first sent me for religious instruction - she was ill at the time, so she couldn't take me to "the big church" in which she was a member. 
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I'll never forget that little storefront church. It stood down the street and in the shadow of a huge and elaborately appointed Catholic church, seemingly, almost as an afterthought. It was so small and had so few members that the thought of attracting a true "ordained man of God" was out of the question, so we had to settle for a little, unassuming man that we used to refer to as Elder Hampton. That little church was the closest thing to worshiping in someone's living room as you could get, but to this day, whenever I begin to lose faith in the basic goodness of my fellow man, or even remotely begin to contemplate God, I think of that little storefront church.
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If I'd remained at that church, I don't know what I would have been doing today. My young instincts led me to become so close to Elder Hampton that I might have even become a preacher. He used to take me with him to visit the old, the poor, and the sickly in the neighbor. Black, Mexican, young, old, Baptist or Catholic, he didn't care what a person was - if they were sick or in need, they were all a part of his flock.
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Looking back on it, I don't know where he found the resources. He certainly didn't get it from our little collection plate - we were so poor and so few in number he couldn't have gotten more than ten dollars a Sunday out of us, max. But in spite of that, he was no Sunday preacher. He was a full-time man of God - if you were sick or in need, you could count on him seven days a week. But after my grandmother had an operation and finally got over her illness, they took me to the "big church," and I never saw Elder Hampton again, but his influence has remained constant in my life to this day - in fact, though I must admit that I'm rarely found in church these days, it is his lingering influence that's led me to write this article, and everything else that I write.
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The first time I went to the big church I was completely overwhelmed with the opulence of it all. Shortly before I arrived, the church had just imported in a new fireball of an ordained minister, direct from Dallas, Texas. He was nothing like the quiet and humble Elder Hampton. He had a big booming voice, wore shinny Florsheim's, expensive suits, and a sense of importance just oozed from every pore of his body. When this man walked into a room it sucked all the oxygen out of the place - you just knew you were in the presence of someone significant.
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HOME OF REV. CREFLO DOLLAR

And God must have loved this magnificent church the minister headed - the choir alone in this ornate house of God was larger by a factor of three than the entire membership of the little church I'd grown accustomed to, and the choir pit was twice as large as the room where we held Sunday school. The parking lot of the church was filled with big, expensive cars, and a limousine was often parked next to the front entrance. In addition, City Councilmen and other politicians were counted among its membership, and a well known entertainer (Billy Preston) was the church organist. In a church like this you didn't have to wait to get to Heaven - every Sunday you were right there. The only problem was, after services you had to return to reality, which was more often than not, a life of pure hell.
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I've often wondered what Elder Hampton would have done with all of those resources. But I couldn't imagine Elder Hampton heading a magnificent place like this. Since he wasn't ordained, he never would have even been considered to head a place like this in the first place. I don't care how Godly you were, stature took precedence there - if Moses wanted to head the church, they'd want to inspect his credentials. But even if Elder Hampton would have been ordained, he was much too humble a man to be embraced by the high-powered people in this membership. With his quiet, unassuming demeanor, even as a member, he would have been a back-bencher  - politely tolerated, but scarcely noticed.

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And further, Elder Hampton wouldn't begin to know how to manage the resources of a huge church like that. While he was definitely a man of God, he wasn't a practical man. He probably would have squander all the church's resources on the no-account sinners in the surrounding community.
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He was just too impractical. He probably would have setup a soup kitchen and built a dormitory to house the homeless at night, and hired unemployed mothers to start a low-cost daycare center on the church grounds during the day. Then it wouldn't be no time at all before he'd dig up the church's beautiful grounds, trying to put up basketball courts and a recreation building to draw young people off the streets after school. And of course, between the kids during the day, the teenagers in the early evening, and the homeless at night, it would cost the church a fortune just to keep up the grounds and repair damages to the building.
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Much of the congregation would have been in an uproar over the chaos he'd create. And it would go far beyond simply chaos. He would have long since lost most of the influential politicians. Every Sunday he'd be hounding them at church, and calling them at home during the week, trying to get them to create Empowerment Zones, and Special Need Zones to establish low-cost loans to help the surrounding neighbors to purchase and fix-up the houses they were living in. It's no wonder he'd drive the politicians out of the church. How could he expect these busy men and women to worship God in peace with him buzzing around like a gadfly trying to get them to help the poor?
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No, Elder Hampton's heart was in the right place, but he'd have been much too impractical to run a big church like that. He was a God loving man, but he lacked common sense. He actually thought that when God said Love thy neighbor, he meant it. What a fool.
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Yeah, Elder Hampton would have definitely been a back-bencher at that church. He would have been the fool sitting way in the back - with Jesus.

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“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward . . ."

Matthew 6:1-34
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Elder Hampton, God knew of the good works that you did in secret . . . And unbeknownst to you, he sent a child to record them.
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Dedicated To Elder Hampton, A Man Of God.

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Eric L. Wattree 

http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com 
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA) 
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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An Ugly Truth: Why Some Black People Are Still Waiting For Santa Claus

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
 

An Ugly Truth:

Why Some Black People Are Still Waiting
For Santa Claus

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Whenever I hear the Name Belafonte the first word that comes to mind is "Class." That’s the only word appropriate for the way Harry Belafonte represented Black manhood in the fifties and early sixties. During a time when the few other Black celebrities with the crossover appeal of Belafonte were trying their best to make the White world forget that they were Black, Harry Belafonte flaunted his Blackness with dignity and pride. This soft-spoken, intelligent, and self-assured Black man with the undulating body drove White women crazy for just a taste of forbidden fruit, while at the very same time giving the White establishment a glimpse of things to come.
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During that period America still viewed Black men in the Steppin’ Fetchit tradition, so for the most part, the only Black men that we saw or heard in the media were people like Lightin’ and Amos n Andy. So brothers like Harry Belafonte were sorely needed to upgrade our image, but ironically, Belafonte was so self-assured, and moved about the White world so effortlessly that there were a few in the Black community who called him an Uncle Tom. Such people will always be around. No matter how impressive a person is, you can always depend on a handful of haters pointing out that one of his shoestrings is shorter than the other. 
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But, of course, calling Belafonte an Uncle Tom was ridiculous. Harry Belafonte was on the cutting edge when it came to defining the modern American Black man. Again, Belafonte was one of America’s first looks at what the modern Black man - at his best - was to become. While on the other hand, those who called him an Uncle Tom represented a throwback to the slave mentality of the Black man at his worse, with a mentality that dictates that any Black man who doesn’t walk around looking at his feet, or who is comfortable in casually dealing with White folks eyeball-to-eyeball, can’t be trusted.
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I’ve come to call that mentality the Smiley/West syndrome. You can always spot these people with just a glance. While they don’t act overtly subservient to White folks, and they’re even militant at times, their interactions with the White world always have a needy, self-conscious tinge to them, as though they’re seeking admiration, or recognition from the White world for being "brave" enough to speak up, and smart enough to speak to them in their own terms. Thus, while on the surface, they seem to be speaking on behalf of Black people, the message beneath the surface seems to be a desperate plea for acknowledgment, for the "Great White Father" to give them recognition for being "special."  Their actions and behavior seems to say, "See, I ain’t like those other niggas!"
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Notice the Body Language. 
There's No Doubt Who's the Dominant
Personality Here.


 

Such people are frauds. They’re trying to play both ends against the middle. On the one hand, they’re trying to gain the admiration of Black people for having the courage to speak up on their behalf, while on the other, they’re winking at the White man and desperately seeking his approval. That’s why such people were so hostile toward people like Harry Belafonte in the past, and those same sort of people are hostile toward Barack Obama today.
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People like Belafonte and Obama have attainted the stature and genuine respect of the White establishment that the frauds so desperately seek, so their response to people like Belafonte and Obama is like that of a child who resents his brother or sister because their daddy seems to like their sibling more.
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There’s clear evidence of this syndrome in the career of Cornel West. For a man who claims to love "his people" so desperately, it’s very curious that he’s never invested one smidgen of his oft-lauded skills as an educator into an effort to educate Black kids. Cornel West has never taught at a predominantly Black school in his entire career. He’s chosen to educate the kids of the White elite at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale instead.  And with respect to that, a good rule of thumb when attempting to assess the character of any individual - be they preacher, politician, or potentate - is to ignore what they say, and watch what they do.
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Any Black man who advocates "conserving"
 traditional American values is,
by definition, an idiot.

There are far too many Black people around who still suffer from this slave mentality. They’ve been convinced over the years that their own people are inferior, so unlike the people of most cultures, whose prime motivation is to come together and help move their people forward, the prime motivation of far too many Black people is to prove that they’re somehow superior to their own people. Then, when they come across other Black people who demonstrate the excellence, and even brilliance, that thrives throughout the Black community, instead of embracing these people, they feel challenged, and become hostile.
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As a direct result of that attitude by some, the very Black people with the knowledge, foresight, and character to help us move forward, are often severely scrutinized and brutally attacked, and that’s exactly what’s taking place with respect to President Obama. Instead of just letting the President do his job like any other president, people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are constantly demanding that he PROVE that he cares about Black people. It’s ridiculous - the man’s wife and children are Black, and he’s Black!
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But it’s more than just ridiculous; it hurts the Black community, and it hurts the nation. It makes the President’s job twice as hard, because in order for the President to be effective, he has to have the solid support of the people. So this constant insinuation by his Black critics that he’s somehow "not Black enough," not only dilutes his Black support, but their constant demands that he do something SPECIAL for the Black community to prove his Blackness, serves as grist for the mill of his political opponents. His opponents use such demands to both further dilute the Black community by claiming that he should be doing more for Black people, and then flipping the coin and telling the President’s White supporters that all he cares about is delivering special treatment for Black people. Thus, everything he does is scrutinize and evaluated in that light. As a result, everything he does that happens to benefit any group, is turned around and used against him as evidence that he doesn’t care about another.   
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BOYCE WATKINS

It also hurts the Black community because it prevents President Obama from using his bully pulpit to even suggest things that the Black community could do to improve its plight, and that’s something that’s needed very badly. A prime example of that was when, then, Senator Obama, was running for President, he gave a Father’s Day speech suggesting that Black fathers step up to the plate and take responsibility for their children. The next day all hell broke loose. Dr. Boyce Watkins in - who it now turns out is an undercover Black conservative in drag - wrote an article in "Your Black World" wanting to know why Obama singled out only Black deadbeat dads. It seemed to me, that should have been obvious - because he's Black, and he wants to see Black people thrive.  But, of course, Watkins was simply fishing for an issue.
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What makes this problem so tenacious, and so easily seized upon by Black demagogues, is that Black people have been on the receiving end of such groundlessly slanderous criticism over the centuries that we’ve become overly sensitive to ALL criticism - even when it’s constructive and warranted. We’ve got to get past that and learn to follow truth. We’ve got to train our minds to always give truth priority over ideology, and learn to follow truth wherever it leads and regardless to whose ox it gores. If we can simply teach ourselves to do just that one thing, it would put us "Miles Ahead" (pun intended) of every other group in America.
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Recklessly irresponsible parents should be
liable for the crimes their kids
commit - Period.

Truth is much like physical pain. While it can be severely uncomfortable, it can also alert us to serious problems that need to be addressed. So again, we should always follow truth wherever it leads, and then, if we don’t like where it leads us, instead of trying to deny truth, we should take the necessary action to modify what it reveals.
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If we can do that, we’ll see many of the problems in the Black community begin to melt away, because truth will tell us that we’re both the primary source of many of our problems, and should be the primary source of their solutions. Truth would tell us that more money passes through the Black community than through many countries, so if we would learn to work together and patronize our own businesses, we could become a nation within a nation. Truth would also tell us that we need to begin to teach our children the value of knowledge from the day they’re born, and we should also teach them about the stupidity of killing one another over a "territory" where they don’t own even one blade of grass.
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Truth would also tell us that our churches should be doing a lot more in the community than just preaching and collecting money every Sunday. It’s not enough to just recite the words of Jesus. Jesus’s words were designed to teach us how to actually live, not just TALK about how to live. 
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One of the things that Jesus said was, "If you claim to be the children of Abraham, you’d be doing the works of Abraham." Are our churches doing the works of Abraham? I don’t think so. If they were, there wouldn’t be a hungry child in America. So again, truth would tell us that our Churches, and the preachers who preside over our churches, spend far too much time TELLING us about Jesus, and far too little time LIVING like Jesus.
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Take the issue of poverty, for example. One of the biggest expenses for many working mothers is childcare. Why aren’t our churches helping to relieve that burden by keeping the churches open during the week and using some of their tithes to provide affordable childcare for working mothers? They could also hire unemployed mothers to staff the operation, and use retired teachers within their congregation to help educate the children. I think that’s what Jesus would have done. 
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So until we open our eyes to the truth, we cannot correct one of the most serious legacies of slavery - the belief by many that Black people have a moral obligation to remain ignorant. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated we think we’ve become, we are still the product of a racist environment, and as such, many of us are just as racist toward other Black people as any racist, sheet-wearing, barefoot, Hillbilly - and in many cases, even more so.  I refer to such people as "bligots" (Black-on-Black bigots) - and let there be no doubt about it, there are many of them out there. 
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So in order to neutralize that inbred legacy of slavery, it is incumbent upon us to expand our minds and seek to become independent thinkers. Each and every one of us should begin to educate ourselves, and thereafter, never give anyone else's ability to think priority over our own. Yes, we should continue to absorb knowledge from the knowledgeable, but we should evaluate that knowledge, and then ALWAYS connect the dots for ourselves.
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And remember, even though knowledge is the most valuable commodity on Earth, it's free, so no one can deprive you of it. There is just as much knowledge on Google or at the corner library as there is at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities combined. So if you don't avail yourself of it, you're CHOOSING to remain ignorant. That's the one thing that we can't blame on the White man.
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And finally, the human mind was designed to hate ignorance, so true pride can only be had through the acquisition of knowledge. Thus, until such time that we obtain the true pride that comes with knowledge, we are doomed to continue to hate ourselves, which will make it impossible for us to ever come together to fight for the independence, equality, and justice necessary to sustain a viable culture. So the long and the short of it is, until we learn to respect the power of knowledge, we will remain enslaved - period.

 

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A Sensible Response to White Supremacy

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-sensible-response-to-white-supremacy.html
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"IF YE WERE ABRAHAM'S CHILDREN, YE WOULD DO THE WORKS OF ABRAHAM"

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2011/07/know-truth-and-truth-shall-set-you-free.html

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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.comCitizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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