Reprising Ma-Dea

Strong Mother God, working night and day,
Planning all the wonders of creation,
Setting each equation, genius at play;
Hail and Hosanna! Strong mother God!

Warm father God, hugging every child, 
Feeling all the strains of human living,
Caring and forgiving till we’re reconciled;
Hail and hosanna! Warm father God!

Great living God, never fully known,
Joyful darkness far beyond our seeing;
Closer yet than breathing, everlasting home;
Hail and Hosanna! Great living God!
Brian Wren, 1989

One of the most controversial contemporary figures on the American scene, is actor, director, producer, writer and Hollywood Mogul Tyler Perry’s “Madea.” Known in full as Mabel “Madea” Simmons. In one respect, Madea is vindictive in nature, quick to not only stand up for herself, but also get even in a bad way. Madea is willing to threaten the use of deadly weapons; destroy property; use violence; take on the law; and use any and all means necessary to show up an offending party. Perry’s Madea has repeatedly landed herself in court, anger management classes, house arrest, and even prison.

Amazingly, in spite of all the cultural criticism of this character as a “racial stereotype, denigrating our culture, and worse a clear sign that Blacks need to produce more positive stories about black mothers and fathers,” the masses of Black American Africans as well as a sizeable percentage of the rest of the American population, flock to the theaters for “Madea” movies. When Perry has tried to make so-called positive, uplifting films, where he was not only the hero, but a positive role model and uplifting image—films like Alex Cross and Good Deeds, these have been box-office failures.

So how do we reprise Madea? We are using reprise in the sense that it means a return to an original theme. To reprise Madea, we need to ask “What is it about Mabel “Madea” Simmons that draws us, that makes us laugh and cry at the same time?”

We are drawn to Madea because, in the words of her creator Tyler Perry, she represents “Big Momma” and to others “mother dear” or Ma-dea, a positive cultural icon in many Black American families that Perry wants to celebrate in his works. She is and has been a real positive symbol of the tri-generational grandmothers and grandfathers who have had to stand in for defeated, down and out, drug addicted, incarcerated, selfish, self-destructive and narcissistic children, carried away with the so-called “freedom” and willingness to live by the “hustle” or ust be as thoroughly “American” as the rest of the country. That Madea is depicted as loud, prone to violence, and ruthlessly blunt, is, in our minds, overshadowed by her motherly nurturing and occasional use of sass and threats of corporal punishment, to get the intended recipient of the same to behave, to change, to see a different way of being. She is a God figure, presence and archtype of God in the Black American African family.

The average black audience knows these negative depictions are really absurd, untrue and finds more laughter than humiliation in the fact that whatever the exaggerated stereotype, big momma and occasionally big poppa, can always be counted on when all else has failed. The Perry movies are not really focused on Madea, as much as they are the real life dramas and crisis situations, broken relationships and traumas of our families that this God-figure/Big Momma has the efficacy to change and transform for good.

The black audience knows all this already, although much of the white audience unfortunately does not, and accepts this comic relief as truth, having already accepted as fact the pathological stereotypes of black women and black people in general. I would argue that these pathological stereoitypes are neither created nor reinforced by Perry and other Black American African producers, but as he pointed out in an interview, “The majority culture will continue to believe these negative images, no matter what he portrays. As Frantz Fanon wrote three generations ago, these pathological views of Blacks and Black life are forged in the dark distorted collective unconscious of white racists, nurtured in the ideology of white supremacy (Black Skin, White Masks). Until whites and “wanna-be imitation whites” stop running from Blacks, making blacks invisible and start attempting to learn from and interact with Blacks, these will persist.

The theme of Madea as a Black cultural icon of motherhood, exploited for commercial success is well illustrated in Acts 16. Paul and Silas, on their way to the place of prayer in Philippi, encounter a young slave girl who had a gift of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.

Contrary to some biblical commentators, there is no evidence she was demon-possessed. The spirit she had was a gift. African people are used to having such gifts and using them for good in the community. The scriptures teach that human beings were given gifts that were taken from fallen angels after Satan was cast down to the ground with the other angelic beings that rebelled against God.

Until we know Christ as savior and Lord, these gifts can be exploited, just as the image of big momma and big poppa can be exploited for negative attacks on the nature and quality of Black American African life.

Because she had this prophetic gift, albeit one not under the control of the Holy Spirit, she cried out repeatedly, “These men are slaves of the most high God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” In her unregenerate state, she was focusing the attention on Paul and Silas as messengers, rather than on the message they were presenting. Further, Paul found all her constant crying out to just be plain annoying. “He ordered the spirit out of her in the name of Jesus Christ.” She didn’t experience convulsions or die; she just was no longer a profit to her owners.

No matter how we may protest that the majority culture will embrace racial stereotypes as truth, these negative images will continue as long as they are profitable. The issue for her owners was that they could no longer make a profit, so Paul and Silas were arrested and brought before the officials of the marketplace. In other words, they were dragged before the corporate moguls to answer for this disruption of Philippian commerce.

When the sitcom Good Times was created by black writers Michael Evans (whom we know as the first “Lionel” on the sitcom The Jeffersons, and Eric Monte, the latter of whom we are familiar with as the writer of his own semi-autobiographical story, Coolie High, they created a family living in the Cabrini-Green housing projects of Chicago. Producer Norman Lear could not adjust his and America’s pathological racial stereotypes of “black fatherless families” and “sassy ignorant combative wives-mothers”—such as the vile, outspoken mother portrayed regrettably by the late fine actress, Lynne Thigpen, in movie Lean on Me. This unnecessarily negative and fictional “parent” was portrayed as an angry Black American African parent who antagonized Principle Joe Clark and called in the white authorities on him. Hollywood goes to great lengths to pit Black American African men and women against each other, even adding fictional characters to real life stories to do so.

After a year of fighting against negative depictions of black fatherhood, Evans and Monte were fired as writers of Good Times, John Amos was fired as the father, and Esther Rolle was later fired as the mother as she continued to fight against Norman Lear’s racist pathological depictions and stereotypes in each episode.

The Devil loves pathological stereotypes of black and brown and red mothers. Our communities are already economically and socially at risk, and the promotion of our selves and our people as pathological assures that the people locked in them will never rise and be free from his Satanic grasp. The Devil wants us to accept negative images of ourselves, of our abilities and of others like us, negative stereotypes about what is possible and not possible for us as human beings, even negative beliefs about what is possible for us as children of God, heirs of God who have been set free, made righteous, made wonderful, by the blood of Christ.

The reprised Madea is none other than the image of God, of “our Mother God” in our midst. She is the words of English songwriter Brian Wren. a “strong mother, working night a day, the genius of our creation”--a nurturing mother, who wants to gather us as her children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. This is the Gospel of the Lord. “Strong mother God—Warm father God, hugging every child, Feeling all the strains of human living, Caring and forgiving till we’re reconciled.” This is the reprised “Madea” we seek, even in the Tyler Perry movies. Though we are somewhat frustrated by the negative stereotypes included as comic relief for commercial success—we keep on going to see who Madea is going to free next, what family she’s going to set on the right course, What crooked politician or greedy developer she is going to outwit, what mother she is going to restore to her children, what children she is going to restore to their mother, what father she is going to beat and browbeat and love into fatherhood in the end.

Yes, the reprised Madea, our Big Momma/Big Daddy is the “great living God, never fully known, Joyful darkness far beyond our seeing; Closer yet than breathing, everlasting home.” Through faith, we reprise Madea, we find our home in her motherhood, in his fatherhood, in our great living God.

Thank you Tyler Perry. God is using you, notwithstanding the demands of the marketplace, and the misguided plantation oriented criticisms of middle and upper class critics and “academics.”

Have a wonderful Mothers' Day celebration.

Modern Juneteenth Movement

Tomorrow many Black African Americans and those who are informed of and support their historic progress in America will celebrate Juneteenth across and country and in fact beyond the borders of the United States.

Most recently in 1994, the era of the "Modern Juneteenth Movement" began when a group of Juneteenth leaders from across the country gathered in New Orleans, Lo...uisiana, at Christian Unity Baptist Church to work for greater national recognition of Juneteenth. The meeting was convened by Rev. John Mosley, director of the New Orleans Juneteenth Freedom Celebration.[16]

The American Flags of Freedom - U.S. Flag ("4th of July") & National Juneteenth Flag ("19th of June")
Several national Juneteenth organizations were ignited from this gathering beginning with the National Association of Juneteenth Lineage (NAJL), followed by the National Juneteenth Celebration Association (NJCA), the National Juneteenth Christian Leadership Council (NJCLC), and the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF). Shortly before this gathering, Juneteenth America, Inc. (JAI) was founded by John Thompson, who organized the first National Juneteenth Convention & Expo, and the National Juneteenth Celebraton Foundation (NJCF) founded by Ben Haith, the creator of the National Juneteenth Flag.[17] In 1996, inspired by the rich history and the desire to support Juneteenth celebrants world wide, the global Web portal Juneteenth.com, was established to facilitate communication and sharing of ideas between Juneteenth participants and supporters. In 1997, through the leadership of Lula Briggs Galloway, president of the NAJL, and Rev. Ronald V. Myers, Sr., chairman of the NAJL, the U.S. Congress officially passed historic legislation [18] recognizing Juneteenth as "Juneteenth Independence Day" in America.[

As you can see, the Black Church has been key in reviving and supporting this National Celebration. It is a way of our resurrecting the hope and promise of America for all of its citizens.

Protect Our People

 "Moses said to the YHWH, "May the LORD, the God of the spirits of all mankind appoint a man over this community.... (Numbers 27:15).

The future of young Black Boys is heavy on my heart as we struggle with the murder of Trayvon Martin. But the truth is I have grandchildren who are bi-racial, several not "Black at all, and I worry equally about them in a world where any child can be gunned down for being in "the wrong neighborhood" or on the "wrong street" or on the "wrong gang turf."

When our children and grandchildren are victimized because they are Asian, Black, Bi-Racial, Female, Gay, Latino, Lesbian, Male, poor or rich Americans, our natural collective, class-ist, ethnocentric, group sensibilities often become prominent in our thinking. We believe that it is a priority to "protect our people" from attacks because they are Jews or they are Blacks or they are transgender. We strategize how we can "protect OUR people."

In the midst of all the heat around the barbaric, senseless and lynch-like killing of Trayvon Martin, I would like to have the historic and prophetic folk wisdom of Moses and Jesus challenge our thinking (and my own).

God had already informed Moses that he would not lead the new generation into the promised land, so Moses responded, "Jehovah-God of ALL SPIRITS, appoint one over this community." Only God could appoint one who would be "over the community." This was a diverse community. The ancient Hebrews were in fact a people that represented diverse tribal groups (see "Tribes of Yahweh" by Norman Gottwald). Not only were they twelve diverse tribes (actually eleven with two half tribes), they had intermarried with a number of other tribal groups and nations, and in fact included in their midst from Egypt was a "mixed multitude," that is to say a multi-racial constituency (I therefore always smile when some Jews tell me they are "white people)." Really is racism so strong in America that every group that immigrates here wants to think of itself as "white?"

But more importantly, as the One Universal Spiritual Reality, God was the God of all spirits. The phrase translates from Hebrew loosely as "Source of Universal Spiritual Life." So much for all our superficial ethnic/racial distinctions (Race is also a very unscientific category). As with the apostasy of Miriam and Aaron concerning his Cushite wife, Moses understood that God is Spirit, and God embraces and is the universal one Loving One of all Spirits (Hence the Hebrew Shema-"Hear, O Israel, the One Lord our God"). In another place God declares, "All Souls are My Soul" (erroneously translated by some from the Greek "All souls are mine."

So God's soul/our souls are troubled by the murder of Trayvon because that boy's life is "Our Life." The scholars who mistranslated the koine (common Greek above) presupposed that God was concerned with or cognizant about ethnicity, gender, gender orientation, family, caste and class, hence they could not conceive in their translation efforts the idea of "One" rather than "many souls."

What really troubles us also is that all of us feel and recognize the same sickness alive in us that we perceived to exist in Mr. ZImmermen's heart. We are agitated about this, in part, because we know that the same fear, the same easy, ultimate, quick solutions to challenges to our existence can be erratic, irrational and genocidal. We would rather eliminate what threatens and challenges us and our world rather than negotiate and understand it. Zimmerman's solution to his fears comes too close to the raw, hidden recklessness concerning human life that is all too resident in us as well. We must, with Moses, become convinced that any solution that kills or negates the humanity of another does damage to our One Universal Spirit. Hence Moses continually "pleaded with God" not to destroy those who had "sinned" and "angered God" in some way. It was the Spirit-Force in his life elevating his consciousness above the tribalistic, ethnocentric, legalistic understanding that he and his community had always understood to be "of God."

In Luke 3:23 the author tells us that "Jesus was 33 years old when he began his ministry, and that he was the son, or so it was thought, of Joseph." Throughout Luke's Gospel he seeks to correct the thinking of the community that Jesus should be thought of as the Christ of God because he was the heir to some bloodline "from Joseph to Seth." No. It is not human blood that determines our oneness. It is not the tribe or clan or caste that determines our worth, our humanity, our "somebodyness." It is the fact that we are all part of the One Spiritual Life that we call God. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3 that even those who do not claim the name or the faith still, as their own Stoic philosophers have written, "live and move and have their being in that One Life."

I teach and proclaim the Virgin Birth of Christ, not as a dogma, but as a way of understanding that the life that we call "Christ" was a spiritual, not a human reality. Mary was not put away because what she had in her was of God, not because of her desire to fulfill her natural inclination to mate with Joseph. All children are our spiritual sons and daughters. All of them are heirs to God's life through the unconditional offer of Love. The crack babies, those born with birth defects, alcohol fetal syndome, Downs Syndrome, with "loser parents" all come into the world as God's re-incarnation of life. We are all daughters and sons of God. Mohandas K. Gandhi wrote, "We are sons and daughters of One Life."

Moses was affirming in his prayer, his request to God, "I know you are not looking for someone who in our opinion comes from the right gene pool. You do not evaluated based on outward appearances, on style without substance, on 'bling bling' and 'chi-ching.' You are not looking at mental acuity and physical strength, or for the well-born and the prominent name. The criteria you will use to choose a leader for the community is deep and has to do with mystical spiritual realities that are nascent in all life and yet for the most part elude us as human beings."

David offers a song of praise, "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him (Psalm 62:1)." Human blood, national origin, citizenship status, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, marriage, family, Jesus said none of this exists in heaven, but in that alternate plane, we are "as the angels (spiritual messengers)." In fact he said we already have "a house" in that plane that does not correspond with our natural reality. In other words most of "our souls" or "our real selves" already exists on that plane. What we have here in flesh and blood is representational of the individual entities (personifications) of the One Soul.

So in spite of the historical, sociological realities that inform this most heinous murder, let us not be sidetracked. Our real need is to embrace as people of faith and as a nation, the concept of the "Oneness of all Life--of all Sentient Beings." If any One Life is abused, castigated, crossed-out, diseased, killed, ignored, mis-educated, neglected, starved, then all of our lives are WORTH NOTHING! What then is happening to our world and to us, where so many continue to be nameless, invisible victims of our affluence and greed?

I have recently been reading "Parable of the Talents" by the late Octavia E, Butler. Her protagonist in that story, Olamina, would put it this way, "We shape God according to the Spiritual Light we allow to shine on our own souls." It is time open our souls more fully to God's light, that God's form in our hearts and minds might be re-shaped to a broader, more inclusive, more magnanimous representation of all humanity.

Buy Low - Sell High

"Balaam got up in the morning...and went with the princes of Moab. God was angry... the angel of the LORD stood in the road to oppose him."

The term "buy low-sell high" is a trading term. It means you can make a huge profit by buying stock at a low price that is going to shoot up before you sell it. The stock was undervalued or devalued for some reason, but the buyer had info or was simply willing to take the risk that his purchase would pay off with a good return.

It is sickening but perhaps not surprising that along with the so-called "resurgence" of ideology of white supremacy in more complex, lethal forms, that those who out of fear or a desire for profit would always be there who will "defend the system," "defend 'The Man,'" make excuses for those who beat and shoot and unjustly incarcerate our young black and brown boys and men with impunity.

They just come cheaper than they used to because they are more plentiful. In the old days we simply referred to them as "uncle toms" and "sell-outs." Today they are referred to as apologists for oppression or "mainstream" thinkers. Those of us who would dare criticize, question and cast aspersions on those "with the power to oppress (powerless people cannot by definition be oppressors)," will always be confronted with, "Rev. so and so who is a responsible kneegro does not agree with you."

We often hear, "Your ideas are not within the 'mainstream thinking' of 'kneegro leadership" My friend and colleague, the Reverend Albert Sampson, the only clergy person in America ordained by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said to a group of Black clergy: "There are only two kinds of Black leaders in the United Methodist Church. Those who stand up for the community and against white supremacy, and those who posture for privilege. They have a perception or rather a deception of power, but posturing on your knees only gets you certain privileges in the master's house, never power."

Nothing has slowed down the struggle to combat and smash white racism and oppression in America, like the mainstream kneegro and his (and more recently her) misconception of power. I hope that those who are eager to get approval from white America or a few dollars more for their bizarre betrayal of the race will at least be silent for a while until we can encourage someone in Florida to prosecute a killer.

Even as I speak, folks in Mississippi are about to stage an insurrection because the outgoing Governor pardon several felons (mostly black) who he considered rehabilitated. Because the law will not allow them to vote and they would have difficulty getting employment under their previous convictions, they pardoned him. Would that these people express similar outrage over the unmitigated killing of a defenseless schoolboy who was doing nothing other than being that and questioning why "stranger danger" was following him through the streets. Don't we tell our children to "get loud" and "act out" when some strange adult is stalking them through the neighborhood. So a black child is dead for doing what we teach all of our children to do--making some noise and resisting a strange man following him through the neighborhood with a weapon.

God was angry with Balaam for going along with the princes who hoped to destroy Israel, so I cannot believe that God is not even angrier now, with the Mr. Cains and Mr. Williamses and Mr. Thomases and Ms. Rices and many others who are ready to jump up and defend and justify the indefensible and the unjustifiable in our midst.

A Sistah in the White House - God's Answer to White Supremacy

"Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. 'Has Jehovah (YHWH) [aka: Heb-Adonai, Christian-the Lord] only spoken through Moses?' they asked. 'Hasn't he also spoken through us?' And the Lord heard this (Numbers 12:1-12)."

The issue was clearly race. "How could God call you to be our primary leader, the highest official in the land, and be stained with Black blood by intermarrying with this Black woman?" They objected to this beautiful Black Sistah occupying the "White House" of the ancient Israelites (Hebrews). The historical-critical methodology of analyzing sacred texts could also reveal that the Nile story (Moses floated out of the Hebrew encampment into Pharaoh's Court Wading Pools) is an early story added to distinguish Moses from his African origins (like the Bethlehem birth narratives of Jesus). But this would have been unnecessary, since the land that the Hebrew's ancestor Abraham settled in was also part of the African continent. (Look at your map and discover which continent ancient Israel is located on).

The Bible tells us that among the ancient Hebrews who left Egypt was a "mixed race people (Exodus 12:38)." Exodus 12:41 reminds us they had lived in Egypt 430 years, hence a comment to explain the Black (Cushite) African and Chaldean blood of many of the ancient Hebrews (Ha'Biru-see "Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic," by Frank Moore Cross, Harvard University Press and "Tenth Generation" by George Mendenhall, University of Michigan Press). Moses' marrying Zipporah was nothing out of the ordinary for him. She was the oldest of the three daughters of Reuel, called Midianite (who were also considered Cushite though living on the fertile crescent or Levant of the Mediterranean Sea).

The racial characteristics in the cartoons that Adolf Hitler's propagandists drew to ridicule and identify Jews were the same cartoons used to identify the children and grandchildren of African American, African Caribbean, African Canadian, Afro-French, Afro-Russian and Colonial African (British) soldiers living in the Rhineland. Hitler even made the claim that the Allies had left these soldiers behind to marry German women as a plot to "mongrelize" pure Arian blood. Not even the Askenazic Jews of Germany escaped this classification as "fair-skinned coloreds."

These mixed-race children were the first targets of Hitler's Euthanasia programs which gassed and sterilized and ultimately shot and starved these black men, women and children of color in Nazis Germany. My colleague The Reverend Chris Pierson just informed me that Anderson Cooper presented this subject today (3/9/12) on AC 360, so you can verify what I am writing through that source.

Perhaps Miriam and Aaron had forgotten that their brother was raised in the culture and religious traditions of African Egypt. In his book "The Destruction of African Civilization," the late Dr. Chancellor Williams traced the King of Egypt's lineage at the time of the Exodus to be in the line of the "Black Kings," because a half century earlier Cush had invaded Upper Egypt and established its dynasty there). The concept of "One God" or what we call Monotheism originated with Pharaoh Akenhaton, also known as Amenotep I. The Ankh which resembles the cross was developed by his dynasty to symbolize the oneness of all life through the One God.

Surely the evolution/revelation/transition that Moses proclaimed in summarizing the three ancestral tribal gods of the ancient Hebrews (Bull of Jacob, Lord of Abram, Fear of Isaac) into YHWH="I AM" was no historical accident for one whose people had celebrated the One God of Egyptian monotheism. Moses' revelation on Mount Sinai clarified that this God could not be represented by tribal images and symbols of fear or bulls, goats, lions or even as divine kings.

But back to the core of this Bible study. What was God's response to their bigotry, their elevation of the absence of melanin as a divine trait? "AT ONCE the Jehovah said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, "Come out to the Tent of Meeting (Tabernacle), all three of you. . . . Jehovah (YHWH) came down in a pillar of cloud; he stood at the entrance of the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. . . . The anger of the Lord burned against them and he left them. . . . 'Why were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?' When the cloud went away from over the Tent, Miriam had become leprous as white as snow (NASB 12:4-10)." You can draw your own conclusions. But it is clear that God has no patience for those hung up on the complexion of his leaders. As an aside of Grace and forgiveness, foreshadowing God's unconditional love, it was Moses who prayed to God to heal Miriam of her white skin: Moses (12:13). Think on these things.

If it is a Boy, Kill Him - The Black Male in Ameria

Do they not go astray who devise evil?   Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:22, 31, 32, 34)

Urban League report focuses on the Black male

     Black genocide: From the cradle to the grave (FCN, 12-22-2003)

     One on one with Dr. Frances Cress Welsing

'Empowering Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today. Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being of the entire American family.'

NUL President Marc H. Morial

“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives . . . . ‘When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live (Exodus 1:15-15.)’”  This was Pharaoh’s edict to the Hebrew midwives.  We must pay careful attention to this passage.  Verses 9 and 10 tell us that the problem was that Pharaoh saw that “there were too many of them (Hebrews) and that they were “numerous and becoming more powerful.”  He cautioned his advisors, “Let us deal shrewdly with them (1:10).”

He thought he had the perfect plan.  The goal was not simply to eliminate the boys.  THE GOAL WAS TO WEAKEN THE PEOPLE.  It was to make them weak.  It was to decrease their numbers.  Seeing those who were supposed to bring and nurture life, act instead to destroy it is a real psychological blow to any community.  The first strategy was to get them to do the killing for him.  It may at first have seemed very arrogant and foolish of him to expect Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew boys, but Pharaoh understood something about human nature. 

First, those who were to nurture life were being forced to serve as immediate witnesses to the genocide.  How many drugged-out mothers have succumbed to the pain of seeing the genocide and victimization of a white supremacist society over the hopes, dreams, futures and very physical safety of their offspring?

In the nations of the Third Reich, when poor Jews started disappearing, those with means could still buy a little food, a little freedom, and a little delay.  The Jews who became guards in the ghettos, and those who supported them, actually came to believe that the massive program of “relocation” (extermination) did not include them.   

Desperate people will easily resort to desperate denials and fantasies in the face of seeming overwhelming power and influence.  Oppressed people, especially those whose faith perspective is limited by their conception of material comfort, too often become the “Indian Scouts” for the colonial cavalry that will eventually annihilate them.  Then those who have had some meager benefit or “funding” from the rich and powerful are often all too ready to preserve their “privileged status” by doing “whatever it takes” to satisfy their benefactors.

The Black African American middle class community understands that many of even the most “progressive and enlightened” among whites in America (and their immigrant American clones and wannabees) have no use for them.  These people love to “help poor blacks,” to conduct mission trips to poor black communities and poor black nations.  They love to wring their hands about what they call “black-on-black” violence.  They sit in Universities and whip out statistics and write papers on all the remedial things they need to devise (of course with themselves in leadership) to save the next generation of “African Americans.”

Yet they won’t step foot in a church, join a club, a lounge, or a nightclub, shop at a grocery store, live in a neighborhood or a send their children to a school where black middle class are in the majority.  Many do not know famous black authors, inventors or significant historical contributions made by blacks.  Many, in spite of numerous advanced degrees have never read a Black author of any kind.  They do not like living and working in situations where Blacks are their “equal,” but prefer to take on the roll of beneficent paternalistic saviors to poor blacks.  They also work hard to pit poor Blacks against middle class Blacks.  They seek to create a false consciousness among poor and middle class Blacks about each other.  Through construct, myth and theory they seek to help all understand how the Black middle class are distant and look down on them, all the while ignoring the fact that these so-called “Poor Blacks” are the brothers, sisters, cousins—and often children of Black middle class families.  Hence we saw television programs in the 70s like the “White Shadow” and “Webster,” and the media still spends an inordinate amount of space and time focusing on that one white teacher or principal who needs to be commended for just doing the job they were paid to do in a “predominantly Black/Latino” school or community center.

Nevertheless, the attempt to destroy the Black middle class and its growth by destabilizing black communities, black households, black economy and black families is working.  The criminal “just-us” system in America has been most effective in carrying out genocide against Black (middle class and poor and underclass) America.  Below are a few illustrations and statistics worth repeating:

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - The prospects are bleak. Genocide is no exaggeration.  Incarceration, AIDS, unemployment and the school drop-out rate are all problems challenging Black people in America—Black males in particular—and according to this year’s annual report released Apr. 17 by the National Urban League (NUL) entitled “The State of Black America: Portrait of the Black Male,” these problems represent the most serious social crisis occurring in the United States today.

“A quarter of all Black Americans live below the federal poverty level, a poverty rate about twice the national rate,” Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) writes in the report’s foreword. “In some cities, more than half of all Black boys do not finish high school, and by the time they are in their 30s, almost six in ten Black high school dropouts will have spent time in prison.”

The bad statistics concerning Black men go on and on. Half of all Black men in their 20s are unemployed, and more young Black men are in prison than in college.

“Empowering Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil rights challenge we face today,” NUL President Marc H. Morial told reporters at the National Press Club. 

“Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being of the entire American family.”

Black males are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as White males, and nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated, with their average jail sentences 10 months longer than those of White men. In addition, Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are nine times more likely than Whites to be killed by firearms, and nearly eight times as likely to have AIDS.

As a solution to the problems, the report recommends universal early-childhood education; all-male schools which emphasize mentoring programs and longer class hours; more “second chance” programs for dropouts and former offenders; a restoration of the Summer Jobs Program; and an effort to convince children that education pays dividends later in life.

The NUL report bears witness to the condition of the Black man and the conspiracy to destroy Black males. Some have argued that the conspiracy to destroy the Black male is a “theory,” however, the scripture of the Bible gives proof of the reality of a plan to destroy the male child.

During the time of Moses, the Pharaoh of that day issued a decree to destroy all of the male children of Israel, as well as during the time of the birth of Jesus, when King Herod issued a decree to kill all of the boy babies to stop the birth of The Messiah.

The conspiracy and plan to target the Black male is best expressed in the Bible in Exodus 1:10, wherein Pharaoh states “Come let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and join onto our enemy and come against us in war.”

Although the NUL report stated there are solutions, but they don’t operate on a large enough scale, the report, however, fails to reflect the decades of work and admired results achieved by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Min. Farrakhan toured the country, alerting young Black men to a planned genocide against them by the U.S. government through his “Stop the Killing” tour.

This series of lectures was aimed at informing the community, and young Black men in particular, of the government’s plan to target young Black men for destruction. It was also during this period that Min. Farrakhan worked with youth gangs to help promote peace, and with rappers in the hip hop community to help decrease conflict.

In the mid-1990s, Min. Farrakhan launched another national tour entitled “Men Only Meetings” where he again alerted Black males of the government’s plan to promote a negative image of the Black man in the U.S. and in the world as a “menace to society.” This image, according to Min. Farrakhan, was largely promoted through movies and other negative imagery to set up the Black male for destruction.

It was during these series of men only meetings that Min. Farrakhan spoke of A Million-Man March that he began to mobilize for in 1995. The Million Man March was the most successful mobilization of Black men in U.S. history, when more than two million men rallied on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995.

Growing out of the Million Man March, more Black men voted in the 1996 election than had ever voted before, and tens of thousands of Black children were adopted by families headed by Black males.

“We must close the jobs gap. We must close the education gap. We must close the high school graduation gap. But I suggest to you, that we’ve got to close—as Senator Obama says in his foreword—the empathy gap. We’ve got to close the gap of concern in this nation today,” said Mr. Morial.

  Explanations of black juvenile homicides in the 1980s that focus on the “super-predator” theory have no basis in fact. Justice Department data show that the entire rise in such homicides for the period 1984-1994 was related to firearms, as has been the decline in homicides beginning in 1995. Thus, the lethality of young offenders increased by having access to guns, rather than there being a new “breed” of young killers. Further, if the 15-19-year olds who were committing violent crimes in the late 1980s were actually“super-predators,” then they should have displayed these tendencies in the early 1980s as well, when they were in the 10-14 age range. Data for this period, though, show no indication of that (FBI-3, Crime in the United States, 1996, 1997).

This therefore lends support to the explanation that the greater availability of firearms, much of it related to the drug trade, was the primary source of the increase in violence.  Criminologist Alfred Blumstein has conducted prominent analyses of the overall racial composition of the prison population. In an examination of the 1991 state prison population, he concluded that 76% of the higher black rate of imprisonment could be accounted for by higher rates of arrest for serious offenses. While this held true for most crimes, the critical exception in this regard was drug offenses, which will be detailed further below. The remaining 24% of disparity might be explained by criminal histories, racial bias, or other factors.

Offenses by blacks are more likely to lead to arrest than those of whites. While the self reported involvement of adolescent males represents a 3:2 black/white differential, the arrest ratio is 4:1.

While there are no dramatic differences in the degree to which blacks and whites become involved in offending at some point, blacks are nearly twice as likely to continue offending into their twenties. The key variable in this regard is the adoption of adult roles. Thus, among young adults who are employed or living in a stable relationship there are no significant differences in the persistence of offending by race.

Research on sentencing in a number of jurisdictions has concluded that disparity based on race does in fact occur. One of the more sophisticated such studies examined case processing and sentencing outcomes for persons arrested for a felony offense in New York State for the years 1990-92.  Controlling for factors including prior criminal history, gender and county, the researchers found that for the more serious offenses, there was relatively little difference in sentencing, although it was estimated that 300 black and Hispanic offenders who received prison terms would not have had they been white.

For property offenses and misdemeanors, though, minorities were considerably more likely to receive jail terms.

Sources:

(Charles Pulaski, and George Woodworth, “Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the Georgia Experience,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (fall 1983): 661-753.

Stephen Klein, Joan Petersilia, and Susan Turner, “Race and Imprisonment Decisions in California,” Science,

(February 16, 1990).

John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson, “Criminal Inequality in America: Patterns and Consequences,” in John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson, Crime and Inequality, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 28.

The key issue in this regard appears to lie in the use of discretion by the courts when sentencing offenders. Violent offenders, regardless of their race or ethnicity, are quite likely to be sentenced to prison.

But for less serious offenders where there is an option, but no obligation, to sentence an offender to prison, prosecutors and judges are making decisions in each case about whether an offender will receive six months in jail, for example, or be required to enter a treatment program and make restitution to a victim.

It would be a mistake simply to attribute the results of such studies to prosecutorial and judicial racist beliefs; in some jurisdictions a significant number of prosecutors and judges are minorities prosecuting and sentencing other minorities to terms of incarceration. The results instead may reflect the degree to which offenders bring different sets of resources with them to the court system. For example, do white offenders have greater access to private defense attorneys who can devote more time to their cases to try to convince prosecutors and judges that a jail or prison term is not warranted? Do they have greater access to expert psychiatric testimony or can they afford to subsidize placement in a substance abuse treatment program? Or, is unconscious racism at play: do whites speak in a language and manner that is more comfortable to the decision makers in the courtroom?

These questions have important implications for developing remedies for the racial disparities that are so prominent in the criminal justice system. While some might advocate that a solution to minority over-representation in the prison system would be to sentence more white offenders to prison, such an approach would be extremely costly and would not alleviate any of the harms suffered by minority communities.

The alternative approach is to examine the factors that enable white, or middle class, offenders to be sentenced to non-prison terms more frequently and to replicate those conditions for low-income people. For example, if middle class offenders have greater access to drug treatment resources, courts and communities could expand such services to make them accessible to a broader range of offenders. Additionally, greater resources could be devoted to indigent defense services, a proposal to which Attorney General Janet Reno has frequently called attention.

Since 1980, the “war on drugs” has been the most significant factor contributing to the rise of prison and jail populations. Drug policies have also had a disproportionate impact on African Americans and have exacerbated the racial disparities that already existed within the criminal justice system.* This has come about in two ways: first, drug offenses overall have increased as a proportion of the criminal justice population and, second, the proportion of African Americans among drug offenders has been increasing (James F. Nelson, Disparities in Processing Felony Arrests in New York State, 1990-92, Albany, N.Y.: Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1995).

From 1980 to 1995, drug arrests nationally nearly tripled from 581,000 to 1,476,000, thus bringing nearly a million additional drug cases to the court system each year. Over the course of this period, drug cases came to be treated much more harshly. Primarily as a result of mandatory sentencing policies adopted by all fifty states and the federal government, convicted drug offenders are now far more likely to be sentenced to prison than in the past. Justice Department data reveal that the chances of a drug arrestee being sentenced to prison rose by 447% between 1980 and 1992. 
Taken from:

The Crisis of the Young African American Male and the Criminal Justice System

Marc Mauer, Assistant Director

The Sentencing Project

Prepared for U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

April 15-16, 1999

Washington, D.C.

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The Hebrew midwives did not follow Pharaoh’s orders.  They knew this wasn’t about the survival of one gender over the other.  They did not allow their enemy’s agendas like “war between the sexes” and “feminists verses male chauvinists” to define their struggle and neither must Black African American, Brown and White Latino American, and yes-Asian American people. 

The Hebrew midwives demonstrated that they were as capable as the King of Egypt when it came to being crafty and shrewd in order to insure their people’s survival.  The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson often says, “No one will save us, for us, but us.”  What the National Urban League and Minister Louis Farrakhan are doing and proposing is just one step in one right direction need to be taken.   But meanwhile the attempt to kill, to incarcerate, to disenfranchise, to mis-educate, to eliminate black boys and also brown boys continues.  Notwithstanding all the test tubes, invitro fertilization techniques, it takes the whole village, not one sex, one type, one class or one cultural competency, to make a community prosperous, strong and thriving.  

Stop the killing of our children!!