FREEDOM SONGS they don't hear

"Sinclair, I can only assume you are talking about Black folk. If you are it is a wasted effort. You cannot speak, as history has shown, about evolving beyond the crude elements, and beyond the contentment of calling oneself a nigger, or expanding minds from submission, and self-mutilation to the hallowed halls, and open fields of freedom, or talk about supporting you own people to an audience of Black Americans. They don't wanna hear that. Free men don't share the same bonds, or connections with slaves the way they do with each other.

There is a vast difference between people who fought for their freedom and those whose freedom was given to them. People who embrace their tragedies, and life threatening contradictions as personal treasures, and are unwilling and terrified of the spiritual work of unlearning, and understanding the differences between one's religion and one's actual beliefs will not rally around freedom calls. People who agree to eat the food of people who despise them, and hold them in contempt will not come together to get better, or heal, or create powerful legacies through their loins and their lives. A people who run their earned dollars out of their communities inside of 15 minutes don't believe in freedom. They believe in dependence not independence. A people who argue against educating their own children with righteous indignation will give their children up as sacrificial lambs to each institution or concept that does not have the child's interest in a good heart, but instead wishes to devour their total being.

It is a dream, at best, that your call to support your own will be embraced, and the conditions of the grandchildren of ex-slaves will change at the molecular level into people of power with a dynamic energy that will change the world-at-large, and at home. If you are addressing the pain of a people with your caring heart, Sinclair, and are holding your facilitation tools to help propel Black Americans out of the mindset of allegiance to white Americans very few will actively support you, or the notion. Why? Because it don't hurt enough. When it hurts enough and enough is enough it will be the season of significant and profound change within the bodies and spirits and the minds of a great people, who today are dependent upon the approval and the acceptance of white people for validation, and identity!

These are my words. I am Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories, first born son of Herbert and Constance B. Woods." - Gregory E. Woods 3.7.13