BLACK AMERICAN stories

It started with the ‘Statue of Liberty’….

When ‘they’ talk about sexy curvy women, which race of women do ‘they’ have imprinted on their sub-conscious minds when so doing? The shapeless… hipless… butt flat… mass of white blubber…like the waifs turned whales….Kirsty Alley and Jessica Simpson?

No.

Who’s the ‘poster girl’ for a shapely derriere? Kim Kardashian. Who’s the ‘poster girl’ for thick, succulent lips? Angelina Jolie. But which race of women represents the actual female blueprint for both physical characteristics? White females, perhaps?

No.

So why do ‘they’…white men…consistently seek to subtract from the physical and aesthetic characteristics (including color) of African-American women? Is it so as to add value to their own woman? Are they not deemed ‘female’ enough? ‘Black enough’?

Hmmmmm….

I can now see why the white-male elite… of the slave era… rejected the original Black ‘Statue of Liberty’ (a gift from France), and remade it in their own image…in the image of their mothers….sisters… wives…

And my point?

The mammies of this white-male elite…their 1st love objects… were women of African hue …as were their wet nurses… housekeepers…’mistresses’…and the enslaved mothers of their mixed-hued children…

White females were thoroughly marginalized…not even wanted as mothers of the ‘master race’.

My question?

Is it not karmic irony that a people who rejected the Black ‘Statue of Liberty’ are now sub-consciously obsessed with, and enslaved to, her image today?

I think so.

(c) Menelik Charles

And all we have left are pictures of dreams deferred…

You know, Confucius wasn't wrong when he wrote 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. I mean, just look at the picture below. What does it represent to you? A care-free bygone age - the 1970s? Funky fashions? Obsolete Kodak cameras? Over-sized copies of Ebony magazine?

What?

Probably all of the above. But the image below is evocative primarily because it features a Black father with his son ( sadly, not a common enough sight these days). A father teaching his young son to ride a pushbike, and firmly guiding him through the process.

A father and son together? Side-by-side? In a public park? In the 1970s? Doesn't it all appear like a distant memory…or, to some, merely hearsay?

Forty-plus years of CIA-created, welfare-supported, anti-family, matriarchy, and what we have left are melancholy memories and broken dreams. The African-American family is on life-support machine. It will remain so until a central place is found for the father in its chaotic homes.

Welfare removed the Black father as head of his home. Welfare was a primary weapon used by the white-male elite to snuff out the two-pronged drive for manhood presented by the Black Power and Civil Rights Movements respectively. The Black power Movement represented the Black man’s determination to take full control of his family and community, while the Civil Rights Movement represented his drive for equal citizenship beyond his community.

The icons of these movements were murdered, imprisoned and/or exiled. And what do we have left among the ruins? Pictures of men; of martyrs; of Movements; of memories; of fathers and families; of childhood; of manhood; of womanhood: of loss.

Now look again at the picture below, and tell me that it doesn't just about break your heart.

(c) Menelik Charles

from archives of
Menelik Charles

"This photography must be from the 1970's. The pride, the type of pride subtly carried and transferred from father to son is distinct to that era. There was better care in the transfer of energies between Black men and their sons then because the conscious awareness of self was new, and it was enforced by grandparents whose youth was affected by an African consciousness that was shuffled during the upbringing of their children, often underfoot, to survive..." Gregory E. Woods

"A very beautiful picture Menelik However as an African, who grew up on the continent, this is a common image, when i relocated west of the Atlantic, i realized what i took for granted, was not as common place here as it was back home, a really sad trend. Do we really have welfare checks to blame for it? i think the cause is much more deep set. The American society is a very complex one, as an outsider i am more than perplexed. There is a solution however, the Black male needs more than ever before to step up to the plate and make this image a common feature. The family as we knew it is changing because our world is changing." - Ngozichi Omekara



Whitfield Thompson said: "Superficial...very little if anything could be concluded from this picture...Screw a two-parents household...WHERE IS THE VILLAGE???????"

Dawn Wolf: "Whitfield Thompson's observation is full of bitterness, and venom. One could only guess why. In two sentences a void of understanding reared its head up, and unleashed a life story of pain into cyberspace."

Lilly Guess: "It's good to hear we still see the story, we see the way, and tell to bring love back."

Menelik Charles: "Unfortunately, to many bitter sons and daughters emerged fatherless from this same period as the welfare plane, and the removal of jobs from Black areas took effect on the two-parent Black family. Now what we have are what Corey Holcomb called "the children of the lost bitches" running crazy on the streets, the malls, the clubs, and in ghettogaggers!"

from gallery of
Nzinga Dominique Nyabinghi