Black Lives Do not Matter | Commodification of a Struggle

Without commerce and industry, a people perish economically. The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system — Marcus Garvey.

Black lives Matter comes out of the same therapy school as Black is beautiful where merit is granted based on how much melanin is in your skin. It however is not trying to suggest other lives do not matter, so in its defense, this is a weak false challenge to either Black is beautiful or BLM. You do not have to study for it or build anything the world needs, you do not need to create new medicines or fix the hole in the ozone— you just get it at birth. Yes, brainwashing has been done by both sides, white and black. The Ancient Egyptians are not remembered for their dark chocolate skin color and curly hair, they are remembered for Giza and Abu Simbel, Thebes, and Saqqara. No one remembers Axum because the girls were pretty, they remember them because of the beautiful Obelisk.

“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.”― Stokely Carmichael

There is being negative, but then there is being critical¹⁾critical lays out a case and is balanced of something and we should never under any circumstance confuse these two words, they have profoundly different implication in the advancement of any people.

If Garvey was correct, how then can Black lives matter? Or do we not study and understand what Garvey and groups like NOI were talking about? What about Malcolm X on education? Clearly, we do not pay attention to Malcolm beyond his handsome personality and cool style. Because what is the reason a life matters in this dog-eat-dog world? Just because our skin is “black” our lives should matter to others? Why? The only reason Gulf Arabs matter is because of their wealth and control over mineral resources. No one in Japan needs to tell the globalized world that Japanese lives matter, they show you in the marketplace that Japanese lives matter when they sell us Sony, Yamaha, and Honda. BLM is a plane from London to New York that leaves you stranded in the Atlantic ocean. Black Lives Matter is an African freedom ship that does not know Africa and allows a White captain to navigate its course. It is the weakest possible response to oppression and its premise are dependent on an appeal to White conscience. And remember we are not having this discussion in 1820 or 1920 but in 2020! After apartheid in South Africa ended, after segregation, after Civil Rights, After-Garvey and still we are having this basic human rights discussion? Will we be still having it in 3020?

“Any time you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for yourselves.”– Malcolm X

BLM is the kind of movement that Whites love because it has the appearance of taking Africans forward yet secures the world for white power. It offers so many opportunities for White Capitalism to look woke and flip a profit. And if it ever gets out of control they know how to pull the plug at the drop of a dime. After all the work done by previous generations the best you can do is tell White people our lives matter? But whites know our lives matter when they need someone to mop their house, chase a ball, rap some self-hate or buy their stuff. It is a shame that #Blacklivesmatter does not mean more power to #buyblack or #blackhairmatters or #Africanhistory.

“History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.”–  Carter G. Woodson

Black Lives Matter within a white configuration of power with us on the outside. 

The reason we know about the Jewish Holocaust and Kosher is that they have wealth and hence power to add value to those things which define them. The reason we know about China is because of its power in our lives and the capacity to manufacture everything we physically need to live in modernity. So they matter to the world because if China was to shut down the global economic system would collapse.

Changing your relationship with oppression is going to be far more productive and longlasting than hoping that your oppression will change its nature while your condition stays the same.

In short, they matter, Israel Matters, UK matters, and Whites in Africa matter because of the lion share of the economy they control. Greeks matter because they are the living descendants of the Ancient Greek civilization which was the father of Western civilization. So when we discuss the real-world “value” of African lives we need to make a case for it. And in doing so we address the great issue of civilization and our contribution to it. And to discuss African contribution means we must go below shallow color labels and discuss our African connection. So how can Black lives Matter if we –by choice– stand isolated from 80,000 years of African history? If we have no connection to the Great Egyptian or Songhai empire?  

We must do away with this hippy theory about our lives are greater than White supremacy. This is the real world not a fantasy of the subaltern. Because this cold real world adds no value to your life just because of some vague notion of one’s humanistic appeal–the world does not work like that.

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”. – Booker T. Washington

 

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MOCKERY AND TOKENISM

Disney is so nice, they have a section called Black Hollywood. But just one tiny issue. Of all the films in the Black Hollywood section who do you think owns them and made them? I have to say if there is an intelligent Alien looking objectively at us and them there is only one conclusion to make. They have made a mockery of our skin. So because Will Smith is narrating a Nat Geo film it is now also a Black Hollywood film? How superficial and silly. May I propose something more relevant? Why not put it in the Jewish European category as it is the work of Ari Handel. Also, show me a photo of the person at Disney that controls what is black Hollywood. This entire thing shows how White capitalism is exploiting this BLM to a. gain credibility as part of the solution, while clearly offering tokenism. b. Make money off of these nincompoop actors who are part of the system. These non-thinking actors will do anything for a White dollar. If there was a concept of perfect oppression, this would be it. It is like some Greek tragedy where we are the weapon used to keep us back.  It is just post-colonialism theory reapplied. Where they keep all the ownership and let us run the plantation for a stipend.

 

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WHERE IS THE MONEY?

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BLACK AMERICANS SUPERIORITY

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WHITE OPPORTUNIST

“The senseless killing of George Floyd — and what it tells us about the stain of systemic racism — has had a profound impact on all of us” — BBC (Tony Hall)

A Case Study of the BBC: Tony of the BBC is cashing in on the movement. ⁶⁾BBC BAM FundIt is a shame that for all these decades the BBC ignored thousands of complaints but today, they have turned over a new leaf and now at the opportune moment BBC Unveils £100m ‘Diversity’ Fund. Here we go. On the surface you say progress. Let me call up Halaqah or Rice N Peas in the UK and ask them how they plan to get in on this.

HARD STATS

According to the US Census Bureau as of the year 2000 there were 2,224,181 blacks enrolled in college.^[34] In that same year there were 610,300 black inmates in prison according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.^[35]The results are highly correlated with education. 30 percent of those without college education and nearly 60 percent of high school dropouts had prison records

Now should a 13-year-old youth or anyone of any age be robbing people and drawing what appeared to be a real gun on police? What would happen to a white teen doing the same thing?⁷⁾The Need to Discuss Black-on-Black Crime ⁸⁾50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were African American. The majority of these victims had a gun or “were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force,”I think they would probably also be dead. And we have full access to police vs the people to draw conclusions from. Now police excess are very well documented and there is no need to even discuss the very real racist attitude of the American police force, it is on record, it is even on camera. But knowing police have real guns why would a youth pull a gun (real or otherwise) on the police? The reason must be that a community and parents totally failed to educate the “black” youth. And we need to start there just as much as we need to deal with police brutality. It is disgusting for police to slaughter people so easily, but it is equally disgusting for a group to ignore the hardcore reality that some people are criminals and have poor upbringing and focus the entire thing on race. Because without African American youth being shot,  groups like Black Lives Matter do not make news. It is in their political interest to turn every death of anyone of color into an exclusively racial issue. And both camps are not fixing the problem and making sure “black lives matter.” And you will get this anytime a debate is polarized and both sides so fixed in their positions. ⁹⁾The backlash against Black Lives Matter is just more evidence of injustice

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WHY DO BLACK LIVES MATTER?

We will always get groups that profit from such campaigns. Had African Americans not had a problem there would be no need for these groups. It is like charities in Africa. What happens to all these orgs like Oxfam when Africa becomes a global power again? And what Sowell said about NAACP is exactly the same for Black Lives Matters:

Your book shows that it’s not racism that holds back black Americans. Given that, why do groups like the NAACP continue to focus on racism?

Sowell: Because it is to the benefit of the NAACP. One thing I have learned from studying various ethnic groups around the world is that ethnic leaders tend to promote ideas that help ethnic leaders even when those ideas are counterproductive to the groups that they are leading. I think the classic example in the United States is Hispanic leaders who want to maintain so-called bilingual programs in schools. When the decision as to whether a child is taught in English or in Spanish is left in the hands of parents, Hispanic parents tend to want their children to be taught in English so they can get ahead in this society. But if that is allowed to happen, then the so-called leaders are going to lose their constituency. As Hispanics master English they move on up and drift out into the rest of society. It is to the leaders’ advantage to keep those kids in Spanish so that they can’t move out into the rest of the world.

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SAY WHAT?

There is a video on Tic Tok where someone affiliated with Umar Johnson (sorry Dr. Umar Johnson) correctly says the entire BLM was a struggle handed to us to control us.  The guy in the video said BLM was preferable by white liberals to African people having a real authentic movement like what happened in the 60’s. There was a time not too long ago when all our icons were people like Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Lumumba, Garvey, Biko, Nkrumah, Gaddafi, even Che. We seem to have different icons these days. In the video the guy also make a very salient point of identifying the language of the struggle which has moved from “No justice, No Peace” to “I cannot breathe” that is some negative affirmation right there. “Please just Respect us” and “Black lives have a right to exist” that language is directed to who?  That language is from victims and empowers the white sense of power over their ex-slaves. So why all of this energy in their direction? Totally different mindset. We are in fact discussing two totally different struggles. The struggle for White attention vs the struggle for African empowerment. There is no struggle in the Islamic world or Latin America or Asia using these kinds of slogans.  BDS does not use these slogans, no one does. And we need to discuss it. But nothing is 100% bad and some minor good has come out of the #BLM moment which even those who take issue with it should use to catapult our own agenda.

Alicia Garza, one of the creators of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, explained in 2014 how Black lives mattering is a precondition for all lives mattering:

Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important – it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide-reaching and transformative for society as a whole.

When we are able to end the hyper-criminalization and sexualisation of Black people and end the poverty, control and surveillance of Black people, every single person in this world has a better shot at getting and staying free. When Black people get free, everybody gets free.

Let us drop the pro-woke for a second and speak truth, there is nothing in that statement that makes any sense. I do not care how good your intentions are, Alicia makes no sense. It is nothing about nothing. And highlights why Whites are so happy to put this movement, above other movements,  and on the front cover of their magazines.

It is odd that we can remain so naïve to reality that we can seriously think this is how the world operates. Vague hippy gibberish. White supremacy is happy that BLM is the most discussed movement representing Africans in America. It presents no threat to nothing they call power. It has no hope of transforming the Ex-Slave into a fully liberated African with self-determination.

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SOLUTION

9 or 90 years old crime is wrong,  you not supposed to be robbing people with real or fake guns. Stop providing racism and excuse to shoot black targets. Stop being in the line of fire. When they shoot a brother with books in his hands, then we are in the green, it is all on them. But when the shoot/kill a brother fighting for a gun–then our arguments are weaker.

When we scream and shout about criminals it sends the wrong message to our youth. It is almost as,  as long as you are of African heritage, white police are not allowed to harm you,  no matter what crime you are committing. We can kill each other day and night, and not be called into account, but when someone White kills us then it is front-page news. This is the message that some organizations are sending out. It justifies and compounds the serious issues inside African communities. And sometimes it sounds like the highest form of liberation is for the criminal justice system to hand our brothers the same treatment they give to white drug pushers. That is not a target or a goal to chase. So go easy on our Black criminals is how we will fix ourselves. Let rapists do less time if they are black. (See Black conservative Jason Riley on this issue in the above video)

In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent has to have a conscience. The United States has no conscience— Kwame Ture 

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PROVE YOUR HUMANITY

When the Jews were conquered by the Romans at no stage did they ever articulate their struggle in terms of ‘mattering” in the eyes of the Romans? As far as they were concerned the savages had conquered them and the only solution was their sovereignty to be Jews again. And again when Persia was conquered by the Khans, they saw the Khans as kufr and Islam as superior, even when conquered. And we know how that story ended, the Khans became Muslim. In Ethiopia under the Italians, the perception of Italians was a race of pigs. And we see the same in Palestine. Not one Palestinian sees the Zionist as superior. You go to Palestine and try selling dates made in Israel and see if they sell–they would trample them underfoot even if dying of hunger. We need self-love, not White approval.

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BLM?

Racism has become an all-purpose explanation for black outcomes be there social or economic– Jason Ridley

White Supremacy has no problem giving airtime and credibility to BlackLivesMatter because it is an appeal to White conscience. Cool 40 years ago but this is the era of globalization and cultural domination. There is only so much that can come out of us telling the world in 2016 that our lives matter. Yet we fail to ask ourselves do “African lives really matter to us”? You can lose your Black life to a Black man over a Popeye’s chicken sandwich in Maryland’. And the world sees this.

So after saying BlackLives Matter and getting the police to stop killing us will it fix the violence within our own communities? The issues within our families? Will it cause African Clothing stores to pop up on every street corner? Will it cause Pan-African films to become more popular? Will it cause us to create our own CNN? Will it trigger all these angry “Black” voices on social media to start reading conscious African books? Will we know more about the Maafa, or about Ancient Mali. Serious questions need serious answers and for decades now we have seen group after group, discussion after discussion, and very little answer to these roots of our problems. Now compare what Nation of Islam and Garvey was talking about and see why White supremacy does not actually have a problem with Blacklivesmatter but had a big problem with Panthers, NOI, and Pan-Africanism. BLM is a reaction to specific stimuli. Nothing long term.¹⁰⁾Garvey, 1918 Economic Liberation Many White liberals will champion it because it is White safe, White funded, and White approved.

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BLACK LIVES MATTER

“Whenever a figure in the nonprofit sector acquires significant assets in a short period of time, scrutiny is inevitable.”–NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty

Working for Black Lives Matter is probably one of the best jobs in the world, because you can work for no salary and still own 3 million dollars of property. ¹¹⁾Black Lives Matter Founder Patrisse Cullors Owns Expensive Real Estate ¹²⁾A good accountant can create enough legal entitles to mask the trail of funds from BLM to her belly. So she can make a statement saying “I never took a salary” but that does not mean she did not siphon funds by other means and opportunities.But we must still praise the Good and be critical of the bad. But the problem is in many of these kneejerk appeal to CNN movements that gain traction in white press is they forget the game is like Chess. So when you see too much press you better ask yourself are my objectives clear. Getting CNN to cover your little protest is NOT an objective. Now if you use that, to push some Saturday Schools or Pro-Marriage agenda then that is something we can praise.

Black Lives Matter (org) is heavily a pro-gay movement. It acts as a proxy to introduce liberal values into African American communities.  It is its gay affiliation that gives them “power” and why that organization, above more useful ones, is chosen to represent African Americans. Because it fulfills the dual role of pretending to fix a problem most African Americans clearly agree with, but inserts the heavier message of gay pride. Black lives has no roots in African identity, a search of the site shows the African connection is almost invisible. As a result, they rest heavily on the undefined identity of “blackness” and with blackness comes an absence of African values, and African culture. It is blackness that allows them to graph homosexuality onto a black identity, Eurocentric feminist values.

How do you affirm something? Why do Black lives matter, what is the root of this ideology? We already know all lives should matter but central to this chain of thought is why Black lives do not matter to the broader group in America. And when we start discussing that reason we can then begin a fix. If Blacks are perceived as a useless burden on society and a bunch of drug dealers that accusation needs examination. It must be address, modified, corrected, debunked where applicable. But to ignore it and simple “AFFIRM” a statement is circular logic and an act of faith.

These objectives are given undue weight and for a group representing African Americans it is odd the priority of Gay rights over the word economic empowerment, marriage, etc: How Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishists us and profits off of us, and that is state violence.

There is no simple way to put it, after a critical review of the Black lives website it is a pathetic shallow joke. There is no comprehensive blueprint for change or an mature comprehension of the challenges which historically are central to African Americans or African globally. What is it is an appeal to White supremacy and an attempt to raise the consciousness of people (of all races) about the struggles of African Americans. That is fine, but without a concrete root in addressing teh problems (especially the internal problems, the legacy of slavery, the inferiority complex, the poor leadership (them being a case in point), the outcome of struggles like this are just the weakest option for White Supremacy to parade around as “The voice of the authentic African American.”

Black Lives is a wishy-washy confused motley ill-thought out proxy for the gay movement. Lacking concrete blueprint or any sort of authentic action plan rooted in the issues afflicting African Americans

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A Gilded cage

You know our problem is so deep it will be very hard to fix. Take this one situation. The loudest person who is livid at police brutality on social media. What do you think happens when you go to that person 4 months after the CNNs have stopped talking about it and try to discuss family, education of their children (an African centered education), economics (buying books and educational DVDs for the home). Are they interested? They consume the very poison the oppressors gives them. The truth is for all the noise-making they still want to be part of someone else’s project, They still want to drink all the Whiskey Jack can Distill, they want the brand names made in Italy (not Africa). And until that changes you can raise a million #BLACKLIVESMatter hashtags and it will make no difference Black lIves do not matter because we have no love of self. And everyone on planet Earth can see we do not love self because of our choices.

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NO UNDERSTANDING OF SELF

“all black people to keep your money in your pocket. Let everybody feel the pain economically of what we are feeling physically when you kill us.”–B.J. Murphy (NOI)

And you have to wonder how many whites reporting on Murphy are smiling. Clearly, the statement came from an emotional mind and not a thinking person. And it comes back to how we choose to look at the world. We are so defeated. If every African decided to go down the old tired route of boycotting what the hell you going to eat tomorrow? You going to boycott the electricity also. Now If you boycott Mark’s Facebook and YouTube that might be a good thing. But these are the signs of confused people without power. So let “Them feel it” ? As the director of this film once said “The problem with burning down the master’s house is all the slaves also live there” (or something like that). Why not just spend your money with your own race, like the Jews do—oh, I forgot. We so integrated into someone else’s house we forgot to build our own.

When one reads the top opinions on the African American crisis you have to shake your head. Is that the top opinion? These clowns they parade in front of us as authentic reps? These are the kinds of people who speak about solutions and make no mention of the E-word. Or speak about racism and make no African connection. Like African in “American” is silent. And what is the fate of people who forget their history? And by forget we cannot include lip service, but living African

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VOICE OF THE UNHEARD?

This voice of the unheard is one tired piece of rhetoric. It is not actually that violent dissent is the voice of the unheard, it is that it is a sign of the pathetic state of African American leaders who despite being the most popular Africans on the planet, known from Japan to Jakarta still think they are unheard and invisible. The world knows African people through African Americans. You go anywhere on the planet and the one image people know is Will Smith, Michael Jackson, Prince, Oprah, Miles Davis, Michael Jordan, Malcolm X, King, Ali, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Cornel West, on and on. So maybe 90%¹³⁾This number is just to say the overwhelming majority of famous people of color are American, disproportionately so of the famous Africans in the entire world are African Americans. So African Americans are anything but unheard and invisible. Music, sports, politics, African Americans are icons around the globe. You can name 20 famous African Americans that everyone knows, try naming 5 famous Arabs that people in China know, or even 5 famous Chinese. All of this is the debunk the argument that African Americans are some invisible group, hidden away and lacking in opportunity.

So then the correct statement is violent protest are the voice of the disorganized. Because no group is so popular, so well documented than any other oppressed group (more than the Native Americans, more than the Vietnamese, more than South Africans, Somali people, people of Congo) on and on. And no oppressed group has so much potential power. Added to this is every time an African American is shot by a cop it is news. Who else gets this kind of coverage. As bad as America is there is a long list of countries 100 times worse. See how Israel treats its oppressed as an example. And America is full of opportunity, unfortunately, when you grow up and live there that opportunity is invisible. But 100s of Africans from the continent run there because of the opportunities. Not seeing your opportunities does not mean they do not exist. The same is true for the UK, parts of Europe, and South Africa. The place is an opportunity hot spot in the world. These are places where hard work really does pay off. But people want to see only Amerikkka because that is the choice they make.

So very few countries on Earth allow the potential for countering one’s oppression than America. It is not Israel, it is not Ethiopia, it is not Nigeria. And people in America with access to lobbying, information, technology can only be unheard because they continue to see the glass half-empty, as opposed to half-full.

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UNDER A BLACK PRESIDENT TO BOOT

in 2016 when you ask people crying and bawling about changing the situation they only know about holding up stupid signs and marching OR doing violence in the street, those are two (and only) two means of dissent within African American communities. And these methods while they worked for King, are D E A D in our modern setup. And let me add, this is not all King did, King was like a politician. So from the 60s to now, even under an African American president here we are.

 

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JUSTICE FOR THE BOTTOM

“Oh but White kids smoke dope and drop out of high school also” Sure they do, they also go to Harvard and Yale in enough numbers to keep the economy of the world in their hands for hundreds of generations. So why are we looking at the failed white people? Why don’t we worry about the ones who are not wasting their life. They already rule the world, despite whatever percentage of them are totally failed. They can afford to have one or two idiots in the race–we cannot. We must hold ourselves to a higher standard.

When I went to university I already knew that this world was not a world created by people like me. I knew that it was a world on their terms. So I could go out there and perform horrible and then compare myself to my white counterparts who also pissed things up. Or I could push the highest standards and compete with the best the white world had. It’s a choice. But i think we like to match these people in the wrong things. But it is not our world. We did not invent the cars we drive in, or the planes that fly in the sky, or the Democratic system of injustice, or electricity not even Facebook. We are a conquered people, we lost the war, they won the war. So the fate of us is until we regain our former status as world leaders, we are in their world on their terms. And we should take a lesson from Asia. Asia beat them at their own marvels in technology. But how are we doing that when we want nothing more than to smoke dope and get the same slap on the wrist from the law as our white dope-selling counterpart? So we are happy if our criminals get the same treatment as White criminals. Is that the message we are singing when we complain about the higher rates of incarceration? Of all those incarcerated are any of them chemical engineers from the African American community, lawyers, sciences? mathematicians? Then they not locking up anyone we going to miss. 

And we know we had a bad start to the race–then why compound it? But the task of catching up and overtaking is do or die. You actually do it or you die. We will be even more conquered. more exploited. Yet know this we a. do not support. b. do not create good businesses, c. do not go and get the skills/education d. do not make sure our children have some education and work ethic. We think us and them should be equally allowed to fail in life on junk food in front of a TV, is that what MX and MLK was fighting for, so we can be like the lowest White person in the Bible belt? We not beat them to Mars, or be the first the cure cancer something useful for humanity. And when you say this people like to remind you about our obstacles. But none of our obstacles are a mystery. You do not sit down in front of an empty fridge and keep repeating for 100 years “The fridge is empty”. The fridge is empty and will stay that way for 1000 years until you get up and fix it. So the problems are the problems like gravity is a problem for a spaceship going to the moon. It would not be a worthy spacecraft if it did not overcome gravity.

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CRUMB THEORY

Because you can work for no salary and still own 3 million dollars of property? And not all “black” folk will like it when you point these kind of things out, just like when it was pointed out to them that Obama was just the oligarchy, White Supremacy in blackface. And the reasons are the same, when all you have is nothing then that nothing is your faith, and any critique of the faith is the total destruction of the person that knows nothing than begging the slave master for crumbs. They do not understand the concept of economics to even dream or attempt it, all they have is marching and singing as tools of liberation. But their vision of liberation is sitting next to White folk on a bus, or using the same toilets. The vision of the enslaved is just moving from the sugar cane fields to working with the livestock.

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EASY VICTORIES

Symbolic gestures of unity created by the BLM are cool, but this is 2017 and we should be beyond just gestures and superficial solidarity because we share oppression. Time to get some solidarity in economics (for example). All these gestures and sense of forward movement  are terminal. For others, they are the tip of the iceberg. After that beautiful gesture is there any hardcore projects going on? Like us comparing notes and making plans to go beyond the flags? Obviously not. What you see is all there is to us. Once CNN puts it on the front page we call it a victory.

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BETTER THAN NOTHING

And no something is not better than nothing. Because we should be way beyond doing just something or just doing nothing. Both are no good. And if marching for BBC and CNN is our magic trick or secret technique for victory then we are just pathetic.

And no you not raising awareness, I think most of the world already know Blacks lives do not matter. You just confirmed it by asking them to reconsider. So this “better than nothing” position is a fallacy because you could say better than nothing to anything. You could say that about the Somali government. Of course, the current government is “better” than no government. So it is an inexhaustible statement that is moot in any serious discussion. You not supposed to be in a position where doing what people did 40 years ago is “better” nor are you supposed to be in a situation of nothing.

I do not need Baltimore or Baton Rouge to wake up and start preparing a Pan-African education. I know to do that without any pushing. We did not need Katrina to realize we should build our own institutions. We do not need Dr. so and so to get fired by the White Zionist at So and so University to realize the importance of independent African work. We know all of this because our ancestors (Garvey, X, Nkrumah, etc) told us so. Yes they did. What was Nkrumah talking about in Ghana? So is it no longer relevant? Then what else should we be doing all this time if not owning our industry and becoming tech giants? Do we need them to come back an enslave us to decide to act? ¹⁴⁾‘Alik Shahadah, Art of Revolution, 2008

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NO INTEREST

Or do you think after building the school all those families who scream and cry when the police execute their sons are going to rush and sign up. Do you think the solution is that easy.? Once we set up some wonderful empowerment projects for youth in South Africa. After everything was finished they found yet another complaint. 99% had zero interest. The very same ones with a banner marching and crying ain’t interested in your solutions. And it is time we be honest about that. Between spending on their children, they prefer a new car, new shoes, a new 40″ TV

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DEMANDING JUSTICE–With what stick?

Speak softly but carry a big stick

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. –  Frederick Douglass¹⁵⁾http://www.blackpast.org/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress

There are some words that do not really go together. aka oxymoron. “Give us our freedom”
and “We demand justice”
You see what has happened is critical thinking is dead. Most just follow the status quo, what they see others doing on social media, etc. So when all the “Black” people are changing their memes– one tends to follow the trend. Anyway let us explore demanding justice from the unjust. Douglass said power can put a demand on power. So Russia can put a demand on America and vice-versa. China can put demands out there also. You mess with them trust us– you will feel it where it hurts. Even Saudi Arabia when they ready can make the odd demand. Iran can cause some tension in the world and make some demands. We see same with North Korea. But what about the 14% in America? What are you holding up to put a demand on America to give justice? Now there is a group in America that is not even 1.2% of the pop, and when they get pissed they make all kinds of demands. They can make America go to war on their behalf. I am just arguing one point from the POV of the quote that Power responds to power.

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TYPES OF POWER

1. Physical Force: Capacity for violence
2. Wealth: Buying results
3. State Action: Government, lobbying
4. Social Norms: soft power
5. Ideas: Changing action through ideas
6. Numbers by number and legitimacy.

Three laws of power:

1. Power is never static in accumulating or decaying in a civil arena. You either taking power or it is acting on you.
2. Power is like a water. Control of the flow of water.
3. Power compounds: Power gains more power, powerlessness creates more powerlessness.

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POWER AND THE BLACK STRUGGLE

During slavery we had the power to overthrow the oppressor, we had numbers, we had the power of subterfuge yet how often did this power manifest? If you are a dependent and disunited group, makes no difference how much potential power you have. That is like saying a pre-technology people are sitting on 4 trillion dollars of oil. Sure they have potential wealth, but can they utilize it? Africa is rich, but the people poor. Why? Failure to capitalize on their “power” –they do not know how to. It is an educational problem. Then that wealth/power does not exist. The condition for African Americans to have power is only through unity, and unity means shared objectives and pooling economic power. That does not exist and for all the talk of “Black Out”, “Black business support”, “Black networking” “Boycott” none of that even represents a percentile of anything economic. No one at H&M or Puma is losing sleep with our so-called “Blackout”. In short, without the power to unify, it makes no difference how much money an un-united group is. So it becomes all symbolic, boycott today tomorrow you are hungry and back at their door shopping and working in the system you think you hold power over.

Now that we have laid out Eric’s properties of power let us attempt to apply it to Black Lives Matter and the broader African struggle as seen in South Africa right now and beyond.

1. Physical force maybe what some African Americans and South African have. But is it really a real power when it exercises itself on itself. Like destroying the city you need to live and work in, looting stores that employ you and sell you food. I think capacity for violence would be Israel or ISIS.
2. When it comes to economic power we do not need to even go far with that discussion. Sure African Americans spend maybe 99% of their money outside their community, but that does not confer power because that spending is on life-essential things also. So if they decided to stop shopping at Walmart, who suffers more Walmart (which supplies all of America), or African Americans that own no stores that supply them with their basic needs. So it is not really power at all. Had African Americans owned large industries that create wealth in America as opposed to be the labor in those large industries that would be very different–then we would be talking about real economic power.
3. Again when you say Lobby to the average African American it is a word LAMPROPHONY. They never heard of it. They think it means standing in a hall. You ask them what is the process of changing legislation, even the most educated do not know. It is a word absent from the African American struggle. Just a Google search of it brings up some interesting results. So for all the shouting and marching the tool used most by serious people to change policy is still, after King, after Garvey unknown to the majority and totally absent from the campaigns of almost every African American “for change” organization.
4. With everyone on social media changing their profile pictures to “demand Justice” this is a form of social power. With the constant mention in the news it is spreading ideas, but without the aforementioned points it is news at the discretion of White media bosses.
5. While ideas are being changed, it is not crossing over the race divide. White opinion, regardless of how obvious the brutality is remain unflinching. They watch a video of an African American being killed on camera with no justification but still blame African Americans as deserving of the brutality.
6. At 14% numbers are there, Jews are 1.2% and get a lot more done. And this issue of authenticity is a problem because it is set and controlled by the forces of oppression. Black Lives Matter is one group, ideologically a pretty weak and surface based solution group. Yet that is the group chosen by White Supremacy and authenticated as the voice of African Americans. And while it is a focused group– without the needed long term or reflexivity it almost becomes a patch fix.

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BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER CONCLUSION

Half-steps have never covered long ground— ‘Alik Shahadah

One good came out of the BLM, and that was there no longer is any doubt that racism against African people is real and global. Some have complained that it has escalated racial-tensions. ¹⁶⁾RT has a history of Anti-BLM content for all the wrong reasonsWell, so did King fighting for Civil Rights, so did Mandela in South Africa fighting for the right to vote. When Obama was elected the first African-American POTUS racist groups in America exploded exponentially under his 2 terms in office. So RT what is your point? When you spray the house for bugs the next day you see a lot of dead bugs–today we are seeing the fall out of exposing the wicked system of anti-African racism. I would expect racial tensions now that the gig is exposed.

The struggle for anything requires clear objectives. And a poor understanding of the issues that make “Black” lives so irrelevant globally means fixing the prejudice will never happen. No one can tell you a paper is valuable and expect someone to accept it. The value must be created. So what value are Africans adding to themselves to be viewed as equal contributors to society? Economically we are clients of the world, we are sold our own culture at a premium, we have zero respect for our rich African history, on and on. So any fix must start at home, with a repair of the things that cause our lives as Africans to  be globally devalued. And economics and identity are central in this fix. The fact that we own nothing and have a wishy-washy identity rooted in a color is not a good place. The state of our family, single-parent families is not something anyone respects. And not to speak about this while exclusively focusing on White supremacy is criminal and destructive to the highest degree. Because we offer ourselves up to exploitation and oppression because of our shortcomings. Our youth are not Palestinians being executed by Zionism for political violence. At Least in South Africa they are organized around specific issues of injustice. But in America it is as shallow, represented by shallow groups. With groups totally confused about the last 500 Years of Holocaust against African people, because they are African. And how this oppression expresses itself (in our identities, in our access to education about self, in our agency) is critical if we are discussing a fix. But how could any sincere group neglect African agency and claim to be a solution?

“Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: ‘that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.”–  Carter G. Woodson

If we change just the Black home and create marriage and love and development that one thing it would do a trillion more good than reforming the racist police. And that is the conversation missing. And it is so sad we lack enough self-critique to have these conversations. The biggest threat to our future is not whites, it is us. All those single-parent/broken homes do not make us the next Ancient Egyptians. All that broken economics and lack of support for our warriors and businesspeople = total failure.

The genius of white supremacy is such that if we had to rate its effectiveness in 1622, during slavery, it would get a 5/10. But if we had to rate its effectiveness in 2022 it would get a 10/10. So if you went to the year 3020 and found Africans still protesting and holding up signs that Black Lives Matter what would you say to them? Keep marching or try something else? Call me in 20 years later and let us see the legacy of BLM for African people. It was just another phase until Whites got bored running the story.

 

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