I RESPECT AFRICA AS THE CRADLE OF MY CULTURE, BUT MY ANCESTRAL HOMELAND IS WATTS

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EFFICIENT THOUGHT IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

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I RESPECT AFRICA AS THE CRADLE OF MY CULTURE,

BUT MY ANCESTRAL HOMELAND IS WATTS

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I was recently in a discussion with an individual who insisted that in order to be a proud Black man I was required to love and embrace Africa. Now, I have no problem with Africa, the problem I have is with that narrow-minded point of view. I'm a realist. I don't believe in either group-thought, litmus tests, or caving in to the beliefs of others just to be a part of a tribalist knitting circle. All Black people don't think alike - and thank God, because it's the uniqueness of our varied intellectual perceptions that contribute to our greatness as a people. So the fact is, while I take great pride in my African heritage, I recognize that in the final
analysis, that's all it is – my heritage, not my identity.
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So, I am sick to death of some of our people trying to force their delusional ideologies down our throats about the meaning of Black pride as though it's some sort of cultural gospel - and it always seems to be the most undereducated among us who tend to spew that delusional nonsense. It's a form of street-corner religion and just as clueless. They're the flip side of the Trump crowd, who have a tendency to do more feeling than they do thinking. So, while I fully understand that no one man corners the market on either knowledge, wisdom, or intellect, I've concluded that we are in dire need of an alternative point of view about what it means to be a proud African-American, minus the tribalist bullshit.
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The truth is, Africa is just another name on the map to me. Yes, it's the cradle of my culture, and I appreciate that, but on a strictly personal level, I have no more connection with Africa than I do China. I have more of a personal connection to the Los Angeles General Hospital where I was born than I do Africa, but I don't love it either. It's just a hospital, and I don't love buildings any more than I do plots of land.
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The people who like to spew this theory of African homage like to call themselves "woke". But the fact is, they're anything but. They're so desperate to escape the shame of slavery in their past that instead of exploring what it really means to be a proud African-American they're scouring the world in search of a false identity.  Some of these people are so desperate to redefine themselves that they'll hear one speech by Farrakhan and the very next day show up in a bow tie. That's neither independent thought, nor Black pride - that's gullibility, and the tendency to delude themselves into trying to be something they're not. In addition, any man who is willing to give another man's ability to think priority over his own is a weak-minded fool, and a group of fools do not provide a strong foundation for a proud and illustrious people. 
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We don’t need one voice and one intellect speaking for millions, we need millions of intellects speaking with one voice. That's what makes a people great. Following the thoughts of one man limits our intellectual potential. Since we all have unique and varied experiences, we all have unique areas of brilliance and unique perceptions into reality. So, we shouldn't waste that valuable resource by following the limited perceptions of one man. There's no such thing as a "Godologist", so we should all use the common sense bestowed upon us by God to become teachers as well as students. We should all learn from one another. So, any preacher, potentate, or so-called "leader" who thinks he's been chosen to speak for God is not only arrogant, but deluded.
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So, I'm sorry if my attitude tends to offend some people, but it is what it is. Part of being an efficient thinker is not dealing in bullshit, so I’m not about to

diminish myself by trying to lie, or getting all misty-eyed over Africa just to make some dashiki-clad ideologue happy - a person who in all probability has taken on an African name and has completely skipped over the sacrifices of our slave ancestors as though they are something that we should hide in shame - so, who's the one who is brainwashed?  I love my African-American heritage, while they've been brainwashed into being ashamed of who they are - and let there be no doubt about it, they're definitely a product of slavery, regardless to how exotic-sounding the new name they choose to give themselves. Are they ashamed of Frederick Douglass as well? Look in that brother's eyes and tell me what it is that they're ashamed of.
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We're deluding ourselves by looking to Africa for our heroes. Douglass is the kind of brother we should be honoring. If we did, maybe we'd take more pride in who we are as African-Americans and do more to repair the Black community. Douglass, an escaped slave, stood before America eight years BEFORE the Civil War – during a time when they would lynch a Black man for just looking them in the eye – and said the following:
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“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

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Douglass also encouraged President Abraham Lincoln to establish the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Black unit during the Civil War that was organized for the specific purpose of exacting payback for slavery, and his two sons were its first recruits. So why do we feel the need to reach all the way back to Africa for our heroes? I’ll tell you why, because many African-Americans suffer from a serious problem of self-esteem, and that, along with our failure to educate ourselves, are two of the primary dysfunctions that’s holding us down.
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I guarantee you there are going to be some Black people who are going to be intrigued by the title of this article, and then glance at it and say, “Oh, hell, naw. I don’t have time to read all that.”, and then move on to read a piece on twerkin’. That’s a major part of our problem.
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Far too many of us consider ignorance a moral obligation of our culture. Any attempt to free ourselves from ignorance is considered "uppity", or "tryin' to be White." The reason for that is during slavery the only slaves who spoke anything close to proper English were the house slaves, and many of them had a tendency to look down their noses at the slaves who worked the fields. As a result, to this day, many Black people have a hostility towards literacy and the pursuit of knowledge. They consider it "un-Black." Even the phrase "Stay woke" is a perversion of the English language, but they think it's cool, because it celebrates the sound of illiteracy, or what they consider being appropriately Black. That attitude is destroying our children, and the Black community as a whole, because it shuns the African-American's most valuable asset - our intellectual creativity.
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So, the fact is, I feel the way I feel, and I completely ignore the popular Black delusions about Africa. I consider it mindless dribble. I don't love any plot of land. I love people, not geography, and I don't know a soul in Africa, so what is it about Africa that I'm supposed to love, other than a fantasy and the need to compensate for a lack of self-esteem regarding what it means to be an African-American? Absolutely nothing.
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I’m not into fantasies. I deal in reality, but for some reason many of our people are into playing silly little closed-minded games - you know, the same kind of games the White man loves so passionately. Their attitude is, if you don’t look, think, and act like me there’s something wrong with you. That's what keeps us divided and unable to work together and move forward. It's also narrow minded and bigoted thinking that betrays their ignorance and limits their growth. So while they're talking Africa, they're thinking exactly like their White slave master taught them. Thus, I don't even like to waste my time with such ignorance. They’ll say things like, “If you don’t love Africa it's because you’ve been brainwashed by the White man. Every other culture loves their ancestral homeland, why don't you?” My response is simple - So do I, but my ancestral homeland is Watts.
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But because such people tend to be more ideological than thoughtful, what they don’t seem to understand is other cultures have a direct connection to the lands of their various cultures. They have love ones,

experiences, and memories of the land that forges a connection. But the African-American culture is a new culture that’s indigenous to the United States. We’ve had absolutely no connection to the continent of Africa for over 400 years. So, to claim to have a passionate love for Africa is just a flat-out lie designed to reap props in the hood. It's simply a form of "me too-ism" in a desperate attempt to be like other cultures.  If these people's passion for Africa wasn't a lie, more of them would be living there, but you couldn't even banish such people to Africa. As they were being transported back they'd be kickin' and screamin' bloody murder. So, the real difference between myself and people like this is, I don’t believe in lyin’ for props - I'm an African-American, I love living in America, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Period.
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I'm fully capable of being a strong and prideful Black man without lying about loving a place that I know absolutely nothing about, just like I can love God without caring anything about religion. So the fact that Africa is just another place on the map to me doesn’t make me any less Black, it simply means that I’m a strong, Black, African-American man who takes pride in my own cultural experience - slavery and all - and I don't indulge in delusional bullshit.
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Engaging in delusions about Africa like the one above is both a major

cause, and symptom, of Black dysfunction. First, it teaches us to be delusional and less than efficient thinkers, and secondly, it sends a subliminal message to our children that says there’s something inherently inferior about the African-American culture. It sends the message that we’re nothing more than tarnished and impure Africans, but that’s far from the case. In fact, African-Americans represent the evolution of the Black man. So, we need to take more pride in who WE are, not Shaka Zulu, or scouring the Earth looking for a sense of false identity. 
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Like any other species in nature that’s faced with overwhelming adversity that threatens their survival, nature steps in and provides them with the necessary capabilities to overcome that adversity, or to evolve. So, the fact is, the severe adversity of the African-American experience has caused us to evolve into MORE, rather than less.
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Having to deal with racism, injustice, and bigotry from the time we open our eyes in the morning until we close them at night has given us an intellectual muscularity. It's like spending every day at the gym - Every day, all day. It's given us the ability to deal with bigots while on autopilot and without even having to think about it. In my own case, it's gotten to the point where dealing with bigots has even become a form of recreation. So it’s simply up to us to recognize our ability, take pride in who we are, and begin to develop our evolving capabilities instead of wasting our time twerkin’, partying, and engaged in other frivolous pursuits. Because what we call, “soul” is nothing less than Black brilliance straining to set itself free.
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The White establishment recognized that fact when they had us in slavery. Initially, they brought us here from Africa to be mules, but it wasn’t long

before they began to recognize our astonishing intellectual creativity, and ever since that time the White establishment has tried to move Hell and Earth to keep that knowledge from us, and to also keep it in check. That, and Bacon's rebellion, is what ultimately led to all of the oppressive laws and traditions designed to “keep Black people in their place”.  Thus, racism is not based on hatred, it's based on fear.

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So, while it is always good to stay in touch with one's roots, the fact is, the African-American culture has long since ceased being purely African - even though the continent of Africa will always define the core of our being. But any connection that we may, or may not have had with Egypt, Nefertiti, and/or Cleopatra is tenuous and remote at best, at least, in a strictly cultural sense. It's as though we're going around, hat in hand, desperately searching for a piece of history to call our own. But we shouldn't place ourselves in that position – it's undignified, pathetic, and wholly unnecessary.
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We must begin to understand that we are a new culture. We ceased being Africans when it became necessary to adapt to the fields and ghettos of

America, and neither are we simply Americans - we became something more than simply Americans when it became essential that we become more than simple Americans for our very survival. We are a brand new culture - a culture conceived in pain, delivered into turmoil, baptized in deprivation, and weaned on injustice. And since adversity is experience, and experience translates into knowledge, we don't have a thing to be ashamed of. The uniquely pointed adversity that the African-American has experienced makes us more, rather than less. We are a culture that is only now in the infancy of its development. For that reason, we cannot hope to compete, lie-for-lie, with the more ancient cultures relative to history, since our history is only now being written. The African- American culture is a culture of the future, not the past, and for that very reason, we don't have to try to compete for historic greatness, because we're writing our history today.
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But the fact that we are a new culture doesn't mean that we are anything less than the older cultures; it simply means that our greatest contribution to man lies before us. So we don't have to look back to antiquity to find a source of pride, all we have to do is study the life and times of our parents, our grandparents, and that generation of African Americans born between the turn of the century and WWII.
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In less than 50 years, the Black people of that generation went from

housekeepers and flunkies to the boardrooms of multinational corporations. In less than 50 years, they went from playing washboards and tin cans on the side of the road, to becoming some of the greatest musicians the world has ever known. In less than 50 years these people have gone from the defenseless and nameless victims of public lynchings, to laying a foundation that led directly to Barack Obama becoming the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth - and that is a chapter in history that is verifiable.
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The most cursory glance demonstrates that there is something unusually unique about this new culture. While social scientists have indicated that all minority cultures must assimilate, dilute, and subordinate themselves to the dominant cultural soup, there is clear evidence that the African-American culture has had a much greater impact on the dominant culture than is the reverse.
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Members of the dominant cultural group under fifty years of age have more in common with the African-American culture in terms of attitudes, style, and personal taste, than they have with their own grandparents. Black music - Jazz, Blues, Rap, Gospel, and, yes, Rock n Roll - is the predominate music, not only in the United States, but in the entire world. Every time a Rock group steps on stage, they sing a tribute to nameless slaves moanin' in the fields - and just to turn on a radio or television set anywhere in the Western world, is to pay a tribute to Duke, Bird, Miles, and Diz.
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In addition, the United States of America has honored only four men in history by declaring the day of their birth a national day of celebration -

Jesus Christ of Nazareth, widely accepted by many as the father of all mankind; President George Washington, the father of this nation; Christopher Columbus, the man credited with discovering the Americas (along with the native Americans who were already a part thereof); and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose forebears were brought to these shores in chains.
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That says a lot about that humble black man - and it says just as much about his people. In spite of the fact that Dr. King began his life burdened by the inherent disadvantages of being blessed with black skin in a Jim Crow environment, his words, his intellect, and his deeds so inspired the heart and soul of humanity that America saw fit to set aside a day for this nation - this world - to thank God that he was allowed to walk among us. His was a soul with such strength that it served to lift the rest of mankind to a higher level of humanity. That's not only a testament to one black man's ability to pull himself from the dust of his humble beginnings, it's also a testament to the capacity of his people to meet the test of greatness - and that's a history that is verifiable.
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And we must also take pride in our own personal journeys, and realize that in our own journey through life, history is also being made. You don't have to be a world conqueror to have an impact on the history of mankind; you simply have to make decisions in your personal life that helps to enhance and move your people forward towards their appointment with destiny - and every time you face life's obstacles with courage and perseverance, you meet that challenge. After all, you don't make decisions in a vacuum - every decision that you make in life becomes a public decision. People are watching, your children are watching, and if you nurture your children properly, they will make the character of your decisions an indelible part of the public record.
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Thus, the character that you reflect in your daily conduct carries the seed that your children will carry with them for generations. For that reason, I don't regret one moment of my youth that I spent stumblin' through Watts on whatever drug happened to be convenient. Those years were part of a personal journey that stands as a monument to who I am today. Of course, I related those struggles to my children as stumbling blocks to be avoided at all costs, but they were also related as examples of perseverance, and the determination to overcome the obstacles in my life, and by overcoming those setbacks, it allowed me to relate those experiences with just as much pride as the White culture relates the experiences of General Patton to their children. George fought his battles, and I fought mine, and as far as my children are concerned - as far as I'm concern - one was no less heroic than the other.
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So I don't let others dictate to me what I'm OBLIGATED to think in order to prove who I am. That's group-think, and group-think is not thought at all, it's a sheepish accommodation to the beliefs of others. So, anyone who resent the fact that I don’t think like they do can go to hell.  I have better things to focus on, like how am I gonna move forward right here, and right now. I consider anything else a petty and frivolous waste of brain power.
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Some people tell me that if I don’t know anything about Africa, I should take the time to become informed. My response to that is, why?  I'm not an anthropologist. I'll leave that to people who are interested in such things. We only have so many seconds here on Earth. How is wasting those seconds learning about Africa going to benefit me when I can spend that time learning more about math, physical science, or epistemology? I could become the world’s greatest authority on Africa and still be on my ass. On the other hand, if I put that time into becoming the world’s greatest mathematician, that’ll get the world’s attention.

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I tried to get that point across to many of my brothers when we were in college. They simply wanted to get a degree, any degree, but I already had a young family, so I was there to gain useful knowledge. So, when they asked me why I wasn’t taking classes in Afro-American history (a quick and easy way to gain credits), I told them that struttin’ around in a dashiki spewing tales of the illustrious history of the African diaspora may make them superstars in the hood, but in the long run it’s only gonna lead to making them the most enlightened brothers in the welfare line, and my prediction turned out to be right on the money.
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So, while taking pride in our heritage is undoubtedly a good thing, the realities of survival in American society makes practicality a far superior pursuit. But due to our natural tendency to be entertainers, and our need to impress upon others the pride we take in being Black, many in the Black community have yet to recognize that fact, and that’s why we’re struggling.
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Black pride is not about lip-service regarding how much we love Africa or subject to any other kind of litmus test, it’s about intellectual development, independence of thought, and the confidence and strength of character to be your own man and avoid feeling the need to cater or kowtow to the beliefs of others – Black or White.
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Thus, what it means to be a strong Black man is having the insight to understand the importance of knowledge, the strength and independence of thought to become your own hero, and the confidence to never allow anyone to remove your cape.
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Neither scholar nor the head of state,

The most common of men seems to be my fate;
A life blistered with struggle and constant need,
As my legacy to man I bequeath my seed.
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More fertile, more sturdy these ones than I,
This withered old vine left fallow and dry;
The nectar of their roots lie dormant still,
But through their fruit I'll be revealed.
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And that, is verifiable.

Eric L. Wattree

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