Emancipate this...

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds..."Robert Nesta Marley

To most, reading these lyrics are accompanied in the mind by the melodious guitar strumming that leads in that song, and its appeal is raceless, timeless and powerful.

Most of us will never have 'dreadlocks,' but we, together with our flesh eating 'imitation rasta' brothers, we shake we 'dread' to the 'woesome' lyrics and haunting beat and croon along with Bob.

Many who hear those words lose the meaning or they're considered too idealist for reality, but perfect for a song.

For others its a guide and a wondrous play on words that make us ponder every time we hear it, is it possible that we could ever be that conscious, that alive, if it were really possible to unshackle the mind?


The following is from Bill Cosby on the African Experience in America:

'They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.

I can't even talk the way these people talk:

Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads.

You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now

We've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.

$500 sneakers for what?

And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2?

Where were you when he was 12?

Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?

And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from??

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa ..

I say this all the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid.

I was born here, and so were my parents and grandparents and, very likely, my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa , no more than white Americans have to Germany, Scotland , England, Ireland or the Netherlands .. The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa.

So stop it ! ! !

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap .....And all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job.

Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.'

Dr. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.


I was not going to write on Emancipation Day because there are enough bullshit artists out there already milking it for what it's worth, and I would rather say nothing than have to lie.

I really don't understand what the African Diaspora in this country has to celebrate, and the abolition of slavery how ever many years ago seems to be the point at which 'westernized' African descendants have stopped developing 'as a people'.

If you are intellectually stunted, racist to your core or very sensitive to sensitive topics I suggest you stop reading right here.

I do not expect to win or lose friends over this, but I would like to hopefully kick start some sort of debate that leads to positive change, or, at the very least, understanding.

Trinidad being what it is though, i'd be surprised if it did.

I am not black.

I do not know what is the politically correct term now, 'negro', 'african', 'afro-trinidadian', black, so I'll use all interchangeably and allow others to 'pull me up' after.

I wont use the word 'nigger' though, because I am neither part of the hip hop culture nor am I an American redneck, so I cant really pull that off.

(Before I go any further, this does not apply to my 'Red' or 'pseudo black' friends who, like Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson, are only conveniently black when it suits them.)

I wanted to lead in by listing all the positive things I know that came out of Africa and contributions of noted Africans in History.

How they have changed the world by their contributions in the development of art, science, education, astronomy, music, etc, but sadly this is written to focus on the negative and hopefully provoke a positive discussion.

The saddest thing to me is how difficult it appears for the average black person to accept being black, and the lengths most black people go to escape their own blackness, and it always leaves me asking why?

There are questions that need to be asked and dealt with both as a nation and as an Afro-centric community, and where such community does not now exist, steps should be taken to create such a body with specific goals and study.

Questions such as:

1) How do black people excuse having the poorest per capita results in all matters education?

The following is from:

Education Sector, a US based independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education policy, both by improving existing reform initiatives and by developing new, innovative solutions to our nation's most pressing education problems. The ultimate beneficiaries of our work are students. Our mission is to promote changes in policy and practice that lead to improved student opportunities and outcomes.

They say:

"Achievement gaps between black and white high school students are discouraging but all too common facts of education life. It's well known that black students are less likely than their white peers to graduate from high school, and score lower on tests like the SAT and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Far less attention has been paid to gaps in higher education. A new study of college student literacy suggests that black-white gaps not only persist into college, but may become even larger by the time students finish their degree.

Released in January 2006 by the American Institutes for Research, the study assessed the literacy of 1,827 graduating seniors from 80 randomly-selected 2- and 4-year colleges and universities. Students were tested for three types of literacy:
"Prose" (comprehending and using information from texts such as news stories and editorials)
"Document" (comprehending and using information from documents such as job applications, maps, and food labels)
"Quantitative" (identifying and performing computations with data from printed materials such as order forms and interest rate schedules)
Scores were translated into four levels: "Below Basic," "Basic," "Intermediate," and "Proficient." To be proficient in prose literacy, for example, a student would have to successfully compare the viewpoints of two newspaper editorials. Proficient document literacy might mean interpreting a table about blood pressure and physical activity, while proficient quantitative literacy could include computing and comparing the cost per ounce of food items.

As the chart shows, there were dramatic differences in proficiency between black and white students. White proficiency rates in prose and document literacy were more than double that of black students, and eight times higher for quantitative literacy (all differences were statistically significant)."

(I do not for one minute believe this to be the ONLY or definitive source of this information and I don't have statistics for what occurs here, I post this to encourage others to research and discuss toward a positive outcome)

The blow mind here is that most of what we know as science, writing and math began in Africa; go figure.

2) Why do black people outnumber every other demographic in the criminal court system and jails and excel at crime and criminal pursuits?

From 'Incarceration in the United States.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)

Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black. Census data for 2000, which included a count of the number and race of all individuals incarcerated in the United States, revealed a dramatic racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated was at least five times greater than their share of resident population.

In 2002, 93.2% of prisoners were male. About 10.4% of all black males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison, compared to 2.4% of Hispanic males and 1.3% of white males.

Why is this fact that has been known and discussed for at least the last forty years not changing, reversing, dipping?

(I do not for one minute believe this to be the ONLY or definitive source of this information and I don't have statistics for what occurs here, I post this to encourage others to research and discuss toward a positive outcome)


3) Why do black people think marrying up means marrying straight hair, or better still white skin?

The biggest hold over from both slavery and colonization, successful blacks see a white mate as a trophy.

Michael Jordan, Brian Lara, Tiger Woods, Dwight Yorke, and many others have all demonstrated this tendency/desire.

Interracial marriages or hook ups are not the discussion, the disproportionate ratio of 'successful' blacks and their interracial hook ups is.

4) Why do black people mess so much with their hair?

Why are so many black men preferring baldness to natural african hair or why is black beauty now associated with straightened hair?

Would Beyonce be less beautiful/talented/sexy with an afro? Oprah? Tyra?

There are other questions I would like to put into the debate for which I cannot post preliminary answers.

Questions like:

Why are black people so willing to climb up on other blacks just to leave them behind?

Why is it so easy for black people to kill other black people?

Why the disproportionate violent response?

Why the willingness to be used as drug mules and drug addicts?

Where are the real Black Leaders who are willing to at least talk about this?

I am not Black, well not in the strictest sense of the word, so I cannot agitate for blacks, nor can i be a black leader devoted to the upliftment of the race.

If I was though, I'd recommend a few things:

I'd tell black fathers to grow up and marry at least one of your 'child mothers' and stay home and paternally raise and support the family.

I'd tell black men that if they spent half the money they spent on clothes and crap for their cars on cutting a track and making a way for their children, they too might benefit from the unwritten social contract, and they too would have successful, sane and civilized loved ones to take care of them in old age.

I'd tell black people to boycott the drivel on Synergy and all other media that portrays black youth specifically and blackness in general in a negative stereo type, of being over sexed, party crazed, pistol packing thugs and ho's and would instead encourage more stereotypes in the likes of the Cosby Show and the Hughleys, of upwardly mobile, family oriented, positive people.

I would tell my Afro Trinidadian brothers and sisters to use days like Emancipation Day to not only reconcile your past with your present, but to link your present to your future, so you can achieve set goals based on realistic models not tied to issues long dead.

To work for your children and to teach them strong family values.

To support black owned businesses and businessmen and women, so as to build up the community from within.

To establish a code of conduct that would see a turning away from the violent response and a joining of hands in a community response.

I would tell them black pride isn't a tee shirt slogan but a mindset and a feeling in the spirit that no man, no history and no word could take away.

I would encourage them to love all their neighbors, but to especially love their black neighbors and to work hard at building the bonds of trust and support that would spin into a web of extended family and community, that could become a safety net for children and grandchildren to hold them and mould them and guide them forward to a better day, and to catch them and right them when they slip.

To form groups that work towards emptying the jails and filling the universities with blackness side by side with brownness and whiteness.

To step forward into the global family as one people with a vision for the african condition now and for the future.

To have words like ambition and devotion as watch words.

To be brothers and fathers and sisters and mothers to all who need it, but specifically as an example to those who don't yet know it.

The 'successful' (read here those with wealth and little or no jail time) races don't have special days of special garb and dances, those days are every day for them.

It should be that way for all if we ever hope to function in a more civilized manner across the board, and to reduce the ills that plague society while we strive to lift every one up together as one people, regardless of race.

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom, 'cause all I ever have, are Redemption Songs.

Songs of Freedom.

Something to think about...