Tag: Oppression

Is it a Crime

                           Thurston’s Thoughts

Is it a Crime

Who is Committing It

The statute of limitations for most crimes began not when the crime is committed but when it is discovered. Likewise, parties to a contract must be released from the obligation of the terms or are in breach of its anticipated stipulations. The commonality is an awareness of the violation or a voluntary release from accountability of its breach or default. During Black History Month we can’t help but be drawn to time statues and breaches of agreed upon considerations. Sorting through time many promises have been made and obligations have failed to be met. However, despite essentially a summary judgement, how can our expectations continue to defy their demonstration? 

History examined unflinchingly betrays the rhetoric of convenience used to sugarcoat the facts of the past. American History is such a ball of confusion and misrepresentation of material facts, malicious intent, and deceitful motivations to render it corrupted and almost historically worthless. We all know the company lines, manipulations, and revisionist masquerades because it is presented as educational fact. Spanning the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers, Christian values, Civil War, Confederacy, the North’s abolitionist posture, Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth, and Reconstruction they are all propagandist contortions which a forensic examination would prove more fiction than fact.

Since the Civil War, if Field Marshall Order 15 was to be honored as agreed upon, there has been many opportunities including the current multi-billion dollar expenditures to Ukraine, Israel, and immigrants. Congress has had over a century and a half to authorize reparations but only need weeks to subsidize war and instability. As a principle of business, if settlement has not occurred in nearly four score and seven years times two, the check probably is not in the mail. Accordingly, the priority of restitution has been rejected as evidenced by the repeal of affirmative action. It would seem if we are always last in line for the promise of America, why are we not when our pledge of allegiance is needed?

The many accumulative oppressions of racism has produced a cultural psychosis of normalizations ignoring the covert demonstrations of its dysfunction, exclusions, and expectations. By now is should be painfully obvious that we can’t trust that. Through the spectacles of brutal honesty the plague of our people, culture, and conditions are in our power to activate our liberation from the psychological captivity of this socially engineered relegation. These obstacles of stagnation have been centuries old in ideology and systemic execution. The subversion was a regimented categorization restricting education, opportunity, and resource accumulation as the normal social, political, and economic model. 

Although these are receding social conditions, they still sustain the ramifications of its occurrence, intent, and presence. However, for us to remain psychologically impaired is an expression of conditioned victimhood and despair. Begging, patiently waiting, and praying  only invites pity, permission, or charity but seldom results. However, we have been treated that way without the dignity of our persistent resistance. We have splurged on complacencies which have diverted our resolve and divided our solidarity of purpose. Our current social tribulations are of lesser impositions than faced by our ancestors. It is our obligation to navigate a course and the necessary sacrifices to combat the residue of captivity by lessening the ongoing affect from it.

We are not what they say we are , we are what WE demonstrate we are. Our family dynamic, incarceration rate, us-on-us crime, substance dependency, mental health, educational deficits, economic discrepancies, health concerns, and wealth depletions are direct results of targeted agendas and policy implementations. They are designed to define us as a subjugated classification, especially if by our behavior we resemble or succumb to that. We must recognize, practice, and promote therapeutic resolutions. So, a designated holiday or month of pacification does not relieve us of our daily obligation to carry ourselves daily with the dignity of celebratory ambitions and behaviors.

Is it better to confront the implications of current racism than the history of it? The current form is easier to prevent or reduce than the denials of the past which don’t necessarily confront the present. The past gashes the present while the present can heal the future. To keep it ruthlessly real time moves in one direction, forward, and our methods of leverage and persuasion must evolve as the targets, demands, or avenues change in the present to remedy the future. So, just as rank has its privileges, it also has its burdens and priorities have their order. The present and the future are amendable, the past is not.

A commitment to the current goals must endure the paths to achieve them. We must engage with the courage to be carried on our shield if our demands are to be honored by us and undeniable to others. We must demand urgency and expedited delivery of our provisions prioritized as others’ have been. Still, our primary ambition must be our internal recalibration that depends on us individually and collectively acquiring or possessing the tools to personally achieve our objective. The most skillful or proficient display of acumen in any field possesses the competitive edge to not only meet the standard but create the standard or pierce the barrier. 

In addition, zero tolerance for disregard or disparaging portrayals whether ours or others formulating stereotypical subjugations. Can you imagine a Presidential candidate openly to our face hurling insults like scraps to be gathered and gratefully consumed by stating that the Black vote could be garnered by selling a sneaker and being under indictment. So sneakers and criminal indictments are synonymous with us and the most attractive way to gain Black votes while having a symbol of your white benevolence standing closely by grinning like its Juneteenth. That’s what some think of us to our face only to imagine it would surely be more colorfully expressed behind our backs. 

The point is certain behaviors produce certain perceptions and degrading behaviors invites disrespect and disregard. The things that secure respect will also secure the other things we have been historically denied or discounted. A fortified edge leaves no room for disrespect, disregard, or malicious mockery without peril. Social justice is the plight of the diligent warrior to secure ground now to be built upon later. What our children see they become, so what we show them should be what we what to see in them, free of the shackles of subjugation but instead based on the content of their character, presentation, and power.

The seemingly automatic assumptions and funky depictions are displayed or conveyed by a minority which is cast upon the majority both by Blacks and Whites. Some battles are along racial lines, others economic, and still others social but in reality they are all internal and individual to either represent the problem or the solution. So is the real crime what someone does to us or what we allow them to do to us. Only the victim mentality will be drag to the gallows while a warrior’s spirit is met at the gallows unbroken.

Victimhood is nourishment for the weak just as adversity is porridge for the determined. Given the statue of limitations are still running and the breach has not been dissolved, the debt remains unpaid. My question is by who, them to us or us to ourselves? The easy way out is to say both but which one is more likely to be settled. The next question, is it a crime for us to patiently wait instead of charging the summit of our demands? Our future plight depends on the answers despite others’ breaches and promises made or broken to us. The crime of default is theirs’s but the crime of resolution is becoming increasingly ours.

 

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One BRICS at a Time

  Thurston’s Thoughts

Dangerous Exchange

One BRICS at a Time

With all this talk about building a wall across the southern border there is a massive wall being built one BRICS at a time. This wall has invisible barriers with observable ramifications. America and its allies of ideology who have long enjoyed prime seats at the helm of the power are experiencing an uncustomary re-seating arrangement. Downgraded from 1st class pass coach and into the cargo area as baggage. The baggage of history is not the problem. The arrogant baggage of political grey poupon has been spread too thin for too long. The palette of geo-political and economic alliances have sandwiched together signaling a menu change.

While America disintegrates from internal political and social conflict, the global community has found a cooperative and conciliatory formula to isolate, depreciate, and decimate America by fiscal devastation. America’s anemic foresight has fattened and hastened BRICS’ influence among the once considered doormats of colonialism and oppression. Globally, BRICS is increasingly comprised of victims and non-participants in colonialism. One need not guess what careless whispers and long memories unite them.

America’s glory days of four touchdowns in peewee league was a long time ago and so was its world dominance. Neither is what America is realistically capable of currently doing. If America cannot unite its population how can it dominate the worlds? The ideology of domination has ran its course whether domestic or foreign and who so ever does not adjust will be consumed by it. Political, racial, and economic supremacy is now the toothpaste out of the tube. With democracy at risk, the destabilization of capitalism via the U.S. dollar default currency status poses a real “terrorist” threat to our national standard of living.

The western hemisphere is being made offers they cannot refuse while America dictates terms we no longer have the clout to enforce. Can America expect loyalty from nations it has rebuked? If BRICS give the same level of credibility to the Monroe Doctrine which eastern Europe has given to NATO in violating treaties, it would be a problem. If BRICS solved America’s immigration problem and in turn required military bases at America’s door, how could America protest or resist? The thirst quenched entices more than the one refused.

Likewise, tentative allies of the Divided States of America will not survive without conceding to the pressures of self-preservation and geo-political treason when faced with similar options. There is not much time or many options at this juncture. As the beast of BRICS swells, so does its capabilities to impact imports and exports vital to American society. It increasingly in effect will become an economic embargo sanctioned by a conglomeration of target to vast and scattered to defend against. Who will come to America’s aid, Canada, Britain, France, Israel, or Ukraine? Several of these countries are dependent on America and others too small to hold the fort.

The answer maybe to build some bridges instead of a wall. A wall is already being built around America. Conversely, maybe it is actually being torn down around us. Half full or half empty, same difference. Just in case, it might not be a bad idea to learn a second or third language or acclimate to a demoted international seating arrangement. Is it better to have part of something or all of nothing? If we don’t make up our mind, it will be made up for us one BRICS at a time.

Thurston K Atlas

Creating a Buzz 

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The Black Reality



Inner City Blues

Black folks, it is time to face reality and speak the truth. We have indeed faced hundreds of years of racism and oppression in America, and any atrocity that the mind can imagine has been committed against us. That is a given, and the damage of those actions and consequences remain evident today, but we have proven to be resilient.

There can be no denying that there are many reasons for the Black condition but are there any longer any excuses? Let me say we have a right to tell the truth about others, but we also have an obligation, to tell the truth about ourselves to ourselves to improve our condition. We may not want to hear it, but we should hear it from ourselves truthfully.

Believe in what you see more than what you are told because you can be shown better than you can be told. Actions always speak louder than words, so what is understood need not be spoken but observed. If we do not like the truth, we should make it a lie by changing the reality, not the narrative. Then, they can’t dispute the obvious.

 There has been no redress for the slavery debt, nor is it likely to be paid to our satisfaction or the extent of the damage done. Yet, it is no secret in our inner circles what we agonize over the most in our communities, and it is not the police, racism, or the white man.

In some of our neighborhoods, we barely see the police or interact with them. If there are whites in our community, they are a scarce minority, if at all. Racism has always tipped the scales, so nothing new or nothing we can’t or haven’t overcome.

We are not fooling those outside our circle because it is plain to see and increasingly harder to conceal. That is why detractors can keep reminding us and deflecting from their actions that hurt us because sometimes we hurt ourselves more. So we give them something to talk about.

Could we be wrong more so than they are, just as two wrongs don’t make a right, but it doesn’t make us even either? In this case, it makes us odd? Odd to harm ourselves in a struggle against harm.

Oddly enough, how can we, and why are we as equally wrong as the forces we complain and protest about, asking them for our equality and safety? What do we demand of ourselves in our predominately black neighborhoods where we practice a different form of cultural racism and genocide?

Why is it easier to point the finger at others as the source of our problems in OUR communities where they have a minor presence? We can not pretend to have submitted our consciousness and condition to their influence when they are not present unless we admit to the frailty of our minds to be so thoroughly conditioned to perform atrocities against ourselves for them.

We have to keep it, one thousand family; it is us doing it to us. Whatever the number of unarmed Blacks killed by the police is a crime and tragedy, but how many more would be at the dinner table if we were not killing our own at an alarming rate in these streets?

How many innocent children would continue to play? How many families have been generationally damaged from the drug game? Why is it unsafe in our communities from those who prey on those who look like them, never leaving the neighborhood to commit a crime but would claim black lives matter to them?

Why are our black women disrespected by us and treated in ways anything but queenly? Okay, I hear you, playboy, and that may be true, but what about the man in the mirror or regard for your mother, sister, or daughter?

Is it proper for Black women to project images appropriating other cultural beauty standards to their impressionable daughters, diminishing the empowerment and dignity of their child’s blackness or self-love?

Is our own self-esteem and character, which reflects our integrity and principles by our conduct, more critical than fronting for others? Are we that fragile in our thirst for validation? How could our conduct, discipline, and ambition have a positive impact on our children? What about for other races to be less resistant to our humanity?

We have proven ourselves to be a resilient people but not as collectively progressive as we could have been. We cannot normalize or excuse the behavior that holds us stagnant as others surpass our condition while holding us in contempt. We have worked hard, but now we must work smarter to produce a reality that aligns with our expectations and demands.

Instead of focusing on the negative, not within our control, we must focus on the negative within our control. We cannot cry our bed is hard if we contribute to making it that way. It is an emotional display that restricts meaningful gain except for an outburst of feelings. It is time to grind if harvest is to be upon us. The grind will take extra effort, but the harvest is abundant by using the principle of addition by subtraction and innovative substitution of traditional education and rejecting self-limiting socialization.

We will have less of a need for others if we take care of our business first. We can take what is ours when we can give it to ourselves. It reminds me of the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, who sang, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing open up the door, and I’ll get it myself.”
Enough doors are open with the ability to open more doors for our harvest, but we must position ourselves advantageously. A change in our mentality and specific education outside of the structured diagram of social engineering must occur.

Many of us know the rules of the streets and how to survive if not thrive, but it is time to switch the game up from the nonsense some have told ourselves that this is the only way available to us. There are better ways, but it will require something more of us. We can’t convince ourselves that it is economics-related because it is other ways of making coin that doesn’t hurt the community in which we live. It is not always the economics but the mentality and lack of applied ingenuity towards the obstacle to economics.

Life will present challenges, but we should avoid the damage we do to ourselves, our image, and our communities. Unfortunately, some aspects of Black culture have taken on a detrimental mentality that significantly contributes to our collective condition. We should not take negative labels or harmful behaviors and embrace them as a positive appropriation of endearment or conduct.

What we immerse ourselves in becomes our reality and desensitizes us from the cause and effect of its impact. Unfortunately, the nature of some of our music and television choices from the earliest age conditions us with subliminal indoctrinations that form our perspectives and behaviors to what we accept, conform to, and aspire to become.

We must be diligent about what we expose our children to, primarily if it promotes negative connotations described as entertainment. We must then ask ourselves, who benefits from our mimicking these actions and behaviors? Can we expect to be anything other than dysfunctional when the stimulus that we bombard ourselves with is tainted by violence and indifference as regular primary programming? Instead, we have tricked ourselves into devouring it and blame others for our appetite.

Just weigh the benefit against the detriment and compare it to what you observe in the community. Black man, we must reacquaint ourselves with what it means to be a protector, provider, and example for our families and communities by being engaged in providing veteran leadership and knowledge-creating stability. Black man, it is time to lead the charge unflinchingly. Black man, let’s end this now by changing now, so they don’t pay a costlier price later.

Our ego or being a tough guy or a “real one” can not displace our obligation to our family or contribution to our community with an allegiance to a broken spirit of weakness disguised as bravado while riding for despair and destruction, not respect or progress. It takes effort to build and larceny to destroy, but whose future are we robbing if not us and ours?

I asked many questions, but maybe they were not questions but solutions or concepts that may lead to solutions. I cannot be ashamed to say that the generation of the eighties and nineties became distracted after significant gains were made in the sixties and seventies against stern opposition.

I say that to say this that the fruit today was from seeds planted then, just as tomorrow’s fruit will be the seeds planted today. We must regain our compass and set a course of self-determination and self-realization that requires no one’s consent, just our grind.

We can’t wait on reparations or equality. You cannot be made to feel a way you refuse. To seek personal equality indicates you personally feel inferior and collective systematic equality in the form of institutional fairness will take far too long waiting for grace to be granted. We grant ourselves equality by the strength of our perspective and integrity. We can not overcome or operate from a position of weakness where power is granted.

It is never good when you have to ask from a position of weakness. With that said, let us pay ourselves reparations first by our conduct and progression, creating an atmosphere where nothing less than our respect and equality will be expected from others or accepted by us.
We need to respect our lives and stop the killings of each other, but call it some soft sucker shit to throw a rock and hide your hand. If it is that important to blast, put your pride on the line and throw down or better yet, let it ride if it causes more problems than it solves. The cycle must be broken by being avoided.

More of our people need to make it home and not just from the hands of the police. Time to break the chains that enslave our minds to move beyond conflict or protest to elevation and progression. Then as James Brown said, we too can “say it loud” and indeed be black and proud.

Progression is a transition of a perception that becomes an obsession manifesting a realization. Reasons are why you do something excuses are why you do not. Make no excuses allowed be our determination not to harm our progression. Let the healing begin within while the solution resides outside the pitfalls of social engineering.

Much love to my brother C.T. (Gery Curl) from East St. Louis. He always spoke of being resilient and resourceful.

 

Thurston K. Atlas

Creating A Buzz

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