BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE
An Open Letter to Richard, and Other Young Black People
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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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