MAKING KNOWLEDGE THE NEW SOUL

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

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MAKING KNOWLEDGE THE NEW SOUL

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS VALUABLE, BUT WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT IS KNOWING WHERE YOU CURRENTLY ARE, AND WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

Black people have a long and illustrious history of great kings, queens, and warriors, but in spite of that we still ended up enslaved. The reason for that is simple - instead of dwelling on the past we should have been focused on the future and developing gunpowder, cannons, and armadas to patrol the shores of African. Thus, we were enslaved due to a lack of knowledge, and we’ll only liberate ourselves through the pursuit of knowledge.
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But currently we’re suffering from the very same problem that led to our enslavement in the first place. Far too many of us are focused on partying, getting’ high, throwing our fists in the air when we’re abused, and watching status chase quo. Then we tend to look back on our past to try to gain a sense of self-worth. While it might be good to indulge in that activity during our leisure moments, if we want to move forward, we must spend our time on self-development so we can take pride in who we are NOW, as individuals. Ancestor worship is a feel-good activity, but it's absolutely worthless when it comes to improving our condition. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't currently be trying to dig ourselves out of a hole, because we'd already be on top. In fact, ancestor worship is what's holding us down, because it's causing us to waste time and energy looking in the wrong direction. We should be focusing our time and energy on worshiping the future, not the past. The past is gone.
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To get a clear understanding of our situation we only have to observe what we do in our daily lives. When you pull out of your driveway to go to work, you glance back over your shoulder before you backup to avoid any obstacles that may be in your way. But once you’re out of your driveway, you have to look FORWARD if you want to reach your destination.
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The very same thing is true in life in general. You can’t depend on Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, or Malcolm to gain the sense of self-worth that'll help you to move forward. You can only move forward and gain a true sense of pride by developing YOURSELF as an individual. Just because Malcolm was impressive doesn’t mean that extends to you. You have to make YOURSELF strong, knowledgeable and Black – and sitting around trying to rhyme ain’t gonna do that. How do you expect to spit any wisdom if you're so uneducated you don't know anything about life beyond your hood? All you end up doing is spewing vulgar nursery rhymes behind a drum machine - and all that does is pass on ignorance to the next generation.
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I'm sure a lot of people are going to angrily object to what I'm saying. I expect that, because unvarnished truth can be painful. But that's okay.  I'll take the slings and arrows, because I love my people, I know their potential, and it's killing me to watch them squander it.
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In that regard, I really appreciate the fact that I'm hearing from some of the people I respect most on this subject. We need to all speak up, because I'm hearing a lot of slogans that sound catchy and pro-Black but bare absolutely no relationship to reality. One of those sayings is, "You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been." That sounds cute, but it's pure bullshit. If you get lost, it doesn't matter where you've been. What matters is figuring out where you ARE, and how you can get from there to where you want to go. 

You can be the world's greatest authority on Black history (and I know a lot of them), yet, still be on your ass. The reason for that is they spend so much time looking backwards that they haven't prepared for the future. They're geniuses in Black history, but they don't know a damn thing about business, politics, or efficient thinking. They think the key to life is about quoting Malcolm, but Malcolm's been gone for over 50 years, yet, we're still fighting the same battles. So we must be doing something wrong - and what that something is, is running around saggin' and tryin' to be cool, or tryin' to become entertainers or sports stars, and then throwin' on a dashiki to represent our manhood.
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Now, don't get me wrong, sports can be a good thing if it can help you through college and achieve your goals. But the bottom line is, games are for kids, and it's the Toy Department of life. Donald Trump's a big sports fan, so I guess I can rest my case on that alone. I also like dashikis, but I've long since recognized that a dashiki can't coverup ignorance and a lack of knowledge.
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Our sisters - who have ALWAYS been the true backbone of our culture -

have seen the light, and if brothers don't wake up, we're even gonna lose them. Black women are now the most educated group in America, and no educated sister wants to be dealing with a 32-year-old teenager to help her raise her children - and beyond that, they're not going to be able to put up with our ignorance. Who wants to lay-up in bed with a clueless and illiterate child?
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If we don’t recognize these facts, we're gonna continue to be shot and killed by rogue cops for a broken tail light, or while watching television in our own homes. We need the knowledge and focus to gain political clout. That is the one and ONLY way to deal with White Supremacy, to become a formidable force in society - ask the Jews, they found out the hard way. So we need to pull up our pants and stop trying to play make-believe.
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The very same brilliance that went into the making of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Marvin Gaye, and Aretha, can also be applied to science, politics, and engineering. So we need to get it together, and make knowledge the new “soul”.

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WE NEED TO GET RID OF THIS KIND OF STUPIDITY

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. 

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I Had a Dream

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE I Had a Dream I dreamed that I opened my eyes one morning and all of America was wide awake. I could hear the echoes of the Bush/Cheney consortium desperately proclaiming their innocence from deep within the Hague, but the world had long since stopped listening. I dreamed that Rush, O'Reilly, and FOX News had imploded into a metaphor for latter-day McCarthyism, and the phrase corpo-congressional alliance was a new vulgarity that had become a part of the American lexicon. I walked through the hood (which had been redefined "the community"), and the only crooked caps and untied sneakers I saw were worn by two-year-olds, and the only pair of saggin' pants I observed was due to an unattended diaper. Yes, there was still hip hop, but the lyrics were literate, and the new message proclaimed the way to be hip, was to hop into a book. I saw young Black families sitting in the park, with proud and respectful Black men fawning over beaming young women. These young men took pride in opening doors and standing when their women entered the room, teaching their young sons by example what it really meant to be cool. Michael Jackson was still remembered as an icon, but his significance to the Black community was very carefully placed into perspective. While he was held up with great esteem for being the very best at what he did, what he did was never confused with the best that the Black community had to offer. It was clearly understood that Michael's greatness was based on his excellence, and to be excellent in any endeavor deserved recognition. But it was also understood that while he was an excellent entertainer, entertainment represented the toy department of life. The Black community had totally reassessed its priorities. We rewarded our children for the ability to think above all else. Instead of waking young Johnnie to show Uncle Willie how well he could sing and dance, he was awakened to show his uncle how well he could do calculus, even as sleep still clung to his young eyes. And instead of crowding into basketball courts to see Johnnie's three point shot, the community crowed into science fairs to applaud the brilliance of his electromagnetic propulsion system. Johnnie was a genuine superstar in the community, and the young girls flocked to his side. They'd been raised to understand that Johnnie represented the future of America. And they'd been taught to see right through the few swaggerers who were left and professed to "keeping it real." They saw the swagger for what it was - a farcical mask designed to hide ignorance and insecurity, and a prelude to deadbeat parenthood and irresponsibility. These young girls were under no illusion. They understood that all of them wouldn't be lucky enough to fall in love with a young man of Johnnie's brilliance, but it wasn't brilliance alone that would insure their future - character was the key. They understood that happiness wasn't based on materialism, and that swagger, flashy cars and bling was a blazing red flag that screamed of a young man's misplaced priorities. They were taught from birth that swaggering flamboyance was a sure sign of frivolity. What impressed them was a young man willing to catch the bus with a sack lunch in order to feed his family. This epiphany in the community came about almost by accident. After buying into the conservative scam of educational vouchers, the exodus from the public school system resulted in its near collapse. It would have been a complete calamity had the private schools not overplayed their hand. About three years into the voucher program, the private schools thought, prematurely, that they were comfortably entrenched. So they began to raise their tuition far beyond what the poor and middle class could afford. In addition, many of our children came home speaking in tongue, and spouting fundamentalist dogma. As a result, many of the overburdened and horrified parents tried to return their children to the public system. But due to three years of under-funding the public system couldn't handle the number of returning students. That led to a crisis that opened the public's eyes to how they'd been misled and manipulated by their so-called representatives. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however. While it caused the community to become enraged, it also caused them to become engaged in their own welfare. So the first thing they did was followed the example that America had made of congress, and purged all but the most community oriented incumbents from office, and replaced them with a group of politicians who clearly understood their role - to serve the people, not feather their own nests. These new politicians clearly understood that if they failed to serve the people, no campaign war chest would be great enough to save them from the people's wrath. In order to assist the public school system, parents pledged to take an active role in the education of their children. Then, as a result of their effort to help their kids with their homework, they found that they were being reeducated themselves. And those parents who lacked the education to help their children found that their children gained a renewed motivation for learning through the opportunity to educate them. In many cases the parent and child truly bonded for the very first time. With this new sense of empowerment, the community began to insist that BET and other businesses, organizations, and individuals who had preyed on the dysfunction of the community, begin to contribute to the community's new sense of empowerment. So now, instead of the BET Awards repeatedly rewarding the same old entertainers swaggering up to the stage indulging their egos, the entertainers were assigned a secondary, but more appropriate role - as entertainment for the young scholars and community leaders who were being honored for their positive impact on the community. And the fact is, it became a much better program, because now, when the entertainers were even allowed to speak, they were forced to search for something intelligent to say in order to be in tune with the environment. And on that rare occasion when one did think that ignorance was cute, the resulting contrast and deafening silence that he'd get in response became an excellent object lesson for the young people. It demonstrated first hand that there was nothing hip about being stupid - it simply leaves one looking silly. Then finally, the community did another thing that was long overdue - it insisted that all of the poverty pimps and photo hogs stop trying to speak for the Black community, unless they'd been specifically elected to do so. Oh, what a dream! Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everybody who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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