An Open Letter to Richard, and Other Young Black People

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

An Open Letter to Richard, and Other Young Black People

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I want to thank you so much for taking the time to write me. Nothing is more gratifying to a writer than knowing that his message is being received.
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As I read your email I couldn't help but think how much you remind me of myself. When I was younger I too felt misunderstood. Then as I got older I began to understand the reason why - because I WAS misunderstood. Fortunately, I had been cursed with the blessing of functional intelligence, just as you clearly are, but unfortunately, gross ignorance is the coin of America's realm. The powers that be have a vested interest in promoting stupidity as cute in this country, and we are bombarded with that message from the time we open our eyes in the morning, until the time we close them at night.
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How many times have you seen the image of the young intellectual portrayed as a Steve-Urkel-type character to be ridiculed, while the dim-witted captain of the football team is portrayed as a lady-killing macho man to be admired? Then think about John Wayne. I don’t know what John was really like in life, but the character that he portrayed was undoubtedly one of the biggest dummies who ever rode across the Texas plains. Yet, he's presented as the quintessential American male. There's a good reason for that - because a nation filled with citizens who worship ignorance is much easier to control. So whenever there's a person with your level of intelligence who can see through the mass manipulation of the people, the very people who you are trying to enlighten will bring tremendous group pressure down on you to shut you up.
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It’s a simple matter of cognitive dissonance. In most cases your peers know you’re right, but they have so much invested in forging their images to conform to what’s defined as "impressive" by the status quo, that to admit you’re right, is also to admit that they’ve been hoodwinked and manipulated. It also suggests that they need to rethink who they are from the ground up, and that’s unacceptable to most people. So the misguided are content to simply play-out the role that they’ve been assigned by society, and they have no interest in a person like yourself revealing the fact that they’re allowing themselves to be played like idiots.
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But as bad as that is for society as a whole, the pressure to remain ignorant is even more pronounced in the Black community. Within our community we are held to what amounts to a moral obligation to be stupid in order to maintain our credibility as loyal to the Black race. Think about that. It’s not only unbelievable, but it virtually ensures a self-perpetuating mode of behavior, and view of life, that’s certain to keep us at the very bottom of society.
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Our attitude comes from our experience under slavery. During slavery the only Black people that the average field slave knew who spoke anything close to proper English was the house slave, and many house slaves tended to look down upon those who worked in the fields. So Black people came to associate other Black people who spoke proper English, or who they perceived to have knowledge and intelligence, with Uncle Tomism, or as "trying to be White." In addition, that also created a mind-set that led to the syllogistic conclusion that knowledge was the White man's domain.
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That's why you have young hip hoppers walking around purposely trying to destroy the English language by saying things like, "What it be like?" - because they see ignorance as cool, and a defining characteristic of what it means to be Black - and many of these young people are brilliant, but they’d die before they’d let that get out into the world. As a result, the very quality that’s required for the Black community to move forward, we’re trying our best to stifle. These are the issues that our so-call Black intellectuals should be addressing, instead of constantly chasing television sound bytes in an attempt to profit from our misery.
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The irony of ironies is, we’re currently living under a system of Urkel’s revenge. The Steve Urkels of yesterday have now morphed into the Iceberg Slims of today, because it’s the Steve Urkels of yesterday who are now controlling Wall Street and pimping us - and the macho captains of the various football teams are now their chauffeurs. So, yet, once again, Urkel has proven that knowledge is power. Ignorance is only bliss until reality sets in.
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So Richard, a young brother like yourself, who is fortunate enough to have the innate intelligence to see through this, have the closest thing to a moral obligation to combat this kind of ignorance. But you don't have to run your head up against a brick wall, or face the ire and condemnation of your peers to address this situation. Simply use your intelligence, class, and behavior, to find ways to send the message that knowledge is cool. Become the kind of Black man that if a bigot points at you and tell his young son, "that’s a nigga," his son will look at you, and then look back at his dad and say, "Daddy, I want to be a nigga when I grow up."
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I noticed that you're a very good writer. That’s one area in our community where knowledge and intelligence is tolerated. Since writers appear in newspapers, magazines, and in the electronic media, we’re looked upon much like artists, or ‘blingless’ celebrities of a sort, so we’re given a pass. So take the time to hone that skill. You can not only help the community by helping to educate our people, but you can also gain both notoriety and independence if you become good at it, and I’m sure you will.
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And, continue your education at all cost, but don't wait for the schools to educate you. Obtaining a receipt from a university is very important; it adds to your credibility. But knowledge is free, and in the final analysis, the only one who can educate you is yourself. So begin right now, and start educating yourself, because once knowledge is obtained, it doesn’t matter where it came from, and your water is just as wet as the water at Harvard. Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, and they are directly responsible for whatever I said that captured your imagination.
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In that regard, the internet is a repository of all of man's collective knowledge, so use it to explore those areas of knowledge that interest you as an individual, because you are unique. No one alive, or no one who has ever lived, sees, or have seen, reality in exactly the same way that you do. So for all you know, you could be that one individual who can connect the dots like no one ever has before.
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Finally, I want to thank you again for taking the time to write me. I’m not getting rich doing what I do, so hearing from people like yourself makes it all worthwhile. So I want you to stay in touch, and let me know what you’re doing. I want to see where you go with this. If I've helped to create a monster, I want to know about it. Because while I’m not a very religious person, there’s much wisdom in religion, and as my grandmother used to say, "God works in mysterious ways." So for all I know, my birth, life, and everything I’ve done up until this point in life, might just have been to prepare me to write one sentence that would ignite a passion in you, which would allow you to go out and save humanity. That’s the way life works. We must never forget, the chances are, some nameless person probably inspired Martin Luther King. Thus, you should never discount the fact that you may be one of those people who are destined for greatness, so always take your thoughts, and your view of reality, seriously.
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So keep this email, and reread it from time to time, and then, go out and give ‘em hell.
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Exploding the Myth: The Impact Of the Black Experience on This Black Man
http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/03/exploding-myth-impact-of-black.html

Eric
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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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I Write to Seek Truth, Not to Reinforce What Readers Want to Believe

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

I Write to Seek Truth, Not to Reinforce What Readers Want to Believe

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A WRITER'S JOB IS TO TELL READERS
WHAT THEY DON'T WANT TO HEAR

I don’t profess to be either the owner, or arbiter, of truth. I’m a seeker of truth, as oppose to a seeker of validation. And I don’t see the internet as a social club. I view it as an educational tool, a place to educate, and to be educated. So writing is not a competitive event for me, nor is it a social activity where I feel obliged to either stroke egos, or tell people what makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside. I avoid such places and activities both online and in the real world, because they’re a gross waste of time. They’re only good for reinforcing the often erroneous beliefs of the people who congregate there. I call them FOXholes.
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So I’m not going to waste my time writing just to tell people what they WANT to hear. If I’m going to write, I’m going to write about what I think people NEED to hear, and if they're mature adults, they should understand and appreciate that. If they’re not, I simply dismiss them as not the kind of people I’m interested in communicating with in the first place. Why try to have a discussion with people whose minds are closed to ideas that differ from their own? Such people have already made up their minds about what they want to believe, so truth, new facts, and even reality, are meaningless to them. So what’s the point of a discussion? There isn’t one.
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I’ve found over the years that you can pick and choose who you want to associate with in the real world, but on the internet that’s not always so easy. So I’ve found an easy solution for that, and maybe others might want to adopt it. When I find that a person online has nothing of value to offer, or doesn’t fit the profile of the kind of person that I’m trying to get through to, I simply ignore that person. The minute I see the person’s name I simply skip over it and move on. That way, it’s like the person’s not even there. And if the person tries to force themselves upon me, as many such people tend to do, I simply block them. If everyone did that, trolls would eventually find themselves with only one another to troll. They’d be relegated to a troll’s Heaven.
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I received a comment from one lady (at least, I’m assuming it was a female) that said something to the effect that every since I betrayed a thought that she didn’t agree with that she’d lost all respect for anything I had to say. It later became obvious that my opinion was offensive to her more liberated feminist views. I had written an article that was intended to give women insight into how most men think. I considered it a very innocuous article, since it was based on what we men have routinely discussed among ourselves since the time we were little boys. It described my observation of how most men categorize women. I pointed out that in my opinion most men place women in one of three categories: 1). Easy - convenient and nice to have around when there’s no one else to have sex with, but we have very little respect for. 2). Friends with benefits - women who we like and respect, but whether or not we'd marry them is a question mark. Or 3). Women who are generally low-key and very protective of their sexuality - or, the kind of women that most men are looking for in a wife, hence, the phrase, "my lady."
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Women don't like hearing that - especially feminists - because they have a vested interest in believing that men are taking them seriously, and that their newfound sexual liberation isn't being used against them. But the fact is, due to the fact that men have been innately wired to be morally corrupt, and all's-fair-in-love-and-war predators by nature (probably to ensure the perpetuation of the species), we are indeed undeniably manipulative of the newfound sexual liberation of women. It plays right into our lustful hands. But that said, it's grossly illogical to lash out at a writer for brazenly reporting the blatant truth. He didn't create the situation, nor is he promoting it, he's merely doing his job, reporting the facts. So that clearly demonstrates that craving the comfort of an ideological echo chamber is a human characteristic, and not merely a conservative affliction. That's why it is incumbent upon writers to never cater to this tendency in human nature.
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But again, the lady was highly offended, and said that as a result, she had lost respect for anything I had to say. I pointed out to her that while I was sorry that she felt that way, I could certainly understand it. So I simply won’t expect to see her name commenting on any of the blogs that I submitted in the future. I let her know that while I was sure I’d miss her input, I wasn’t there to win friends and fans, and I was certainly not there just to reinforce what she wanted to believe. I was there to engage in serious discussions with serious-minded and objective people who are capable of intellectual detachment. Thus, for my purpose, people who are emotional and allow their egos to get all caught up in a discussion are a distraction.  
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So if a person doesn’t like what I have to say, it’s not necessary for them to throw tantrums and spitballs - that’s the way children behave. Such people need to realize that they don’t live in this world alone, and the rest of the world don’t have an obligation to cater to views that make them feel good. There are others who may also disagree with me, but may want to challenge my views in a more detached and intellectual fashion. I welcome such people, because they are the ones who give the internet the potential for being the most powerful educational tool that man has ever known, and more than once, individuals of this caliber have caused me to reexamine my views, and even reverse them.
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But my opinion is my opinion, so if it’s such an intolerable assault on what an individual wants to believe, they should simply vote with their feet, and I’ll get the point. And what’s most ironic about it is, more often than not, these tend to be the very people running around with their hair on fire, wanting to know what’s wrong with the world, and why people are so dumb.
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Well, here’s another "why." Why distract others who are online to discuss issues, explore ideas, and who are genuinely seeking mutual growth, with inane side issues and false assumptions regarding the motivations of the writer. If you feel that the writer has a hidden agenda, do something constructive. Write an article of your own with an opposing view, laying out the issues that you feel are relevant - some of my best articles have started out that way. That way you’re ADDING to the body of knowledge, instead of simply being a distraction. 
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Life is simple. Why make it complicated?
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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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