The sense of entitlement too many Black American’s have taken possession of is baffling, and if they were conscious would be ashamed if they were aware of their ancestors observing them. But they aren’t. I am watching the Tonight Show with Jay Leno show. One of Jay’s guests, a white comedian, Louis C.K. is real funny. Without any reservation his racial jokes about white entitlement began with him comparing his daughter’s standard of life with their peer age groups around the globe.
When Jay Leno asked how his daughters were doing Louis C.K. said, “My kids are good. I mean on paper they’re great. Two little white kids in America.” And later on in his bit he continued with his children’s stories, saying to one of his girls, “You’re a little white girl in America. You wear clothes made by children your age professionally. You don’t get to say, yew ,(at anything you put in your mouth you don’t like).
His timing was impeccable and skillfully left listeners pining for his next line, and even more when he turned on Black people and slavery relaxed and easy like Sunday morning.
“…I just wanna say I’m not trying to say if you’re white you can’t complain. I’m just saying that if you’re Black you gotta complain more because you can’t take people’s historical context away from them…and white people want to like — c’mon it wasn’t us like they want Black people to forget everything.
Like every year white people add like a hundred years to how long ago slavery was. I’ve heard educated white people say slavery was over 400 years ago! No, it very wasn’t! It was 140 years ago… and it ‘s not like slavery ended and everything has been amazing, and ended like a clean shit where you don’t have to wipe…and by the way white people have their own thing, stuff that we went through that hurt us; we have to cope with like when they took our slaves from us! That was really hard for us and we’re still…”
I, like the audience, was on the floor.
The other guest, Aron Ralston, is famous for cutting his right hand off to save his life when, on a hike, a rock trapped his hand between a wall. He has written a book now a movie on his experience, and like the comedian, Louis C.K. is relaxed and easy like Sunday morning. Now here I am a facilitator thinking about the Black youth, many of whom are in the prison system one way or another, I have been working with over the years. They all have parents, and some of these youth are not in the system but share a commonality with other Black Americans, older and younger: a sense of entitlement.
What does anyone owe a spirit of poverty?
Jessica Simpson
Jessica Simpson, I don’t know, but she like most artists did not come from wealthy families. There is a work ethic guiding them, and a vision. There is a work ethic that catapulted African slaves into a wealthy position, on paper, in America. There was something more than a work ethic in Japanese culture that made them a super power a generation after we bombed the hell out of them at the end of the 2nd World War. The Pequot nation was nearly wiped off the face of Turtle Island by the British a few centuries ago. By the 1970’s two Black Pequot women were the sole caretakers of what was left of their traditional land. Today, they are a sovereign nation of considerable means. What lived within Africans who survived the Middle Passage that did not make the journey to the late 20th century and the first decade of the 21st?
Today, millions of Black American youth are committed to failure for a lot of reasons outside of, and within their control. We all know the stories, and many have lived through and survived those conditions and either excelled or merely exist above those conditions. That’s cool. What I am aiming at lies within the belief system of a people that come from a race of people who were connected in the deepest of relationships with peoples from other dimensions and planets and star systems for thousands of years. These relationships structure the inner domain of our race in a way that still has access to realms other races have been trying to access through our music, our dances, our physical powers as athletics, and our spiritual practices still alive within our African Diaspora.
Black Americans are two kinds of people: aboriginal, mystical people, and defeated souls out of relationship with their true selves all rolled up in one contradiction. Is there a way out? Is there anything we can learn from a successful Jessica Simpson who has expanded her portfolio into fashion? Yes. Learn business, but that doesn’t go to the heart of the matter. Our inability to reconnect our spirits with the spiritual practices of our ancestors disconnects us from the cords of our depth and relationship with the spiritual realms that created life and the mysterious forms of magic and creation that formed the concept of concepts: self-discovery. ©Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories (excerpt, Songs of a Father)
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