FEAR BASED RETENTION

In the years I've been in the States there are comparatively few Black Americans with libraries in their homes. If I want to go to a home amongst the people I know to read their books on Africa, for example, or Native spirituality, or Oriental medicines, historical fiction, etc. I'd go to the homes of whites. Their libraries typically are extensive, at best, and impressive, but small generally. Amongst Blacks the education and income level doesn't necessarily come with impressive reading habits, or intellectual curiosity. It should given our history, and the enormous power base of intellectual achievement and spiritual development over the centuries in the numerous tribes and nations we come from.

Perhaps it is in the misunderstanding, or the obsession with the word soul in relation to music, or lifestyle, or African retention within the social framework of Black Americans that continues to undermine the long tradition of education and expansion of the mind in today's Colored folk. I don't know. I know how important books used to be for the past centuries, and how deeply indebted the Europeans are to the African intelligentsia.

Plato said, "A house that has a library in it has a soul." Perhaps his words bring to the light the deep fears Black Americans are holding that retard growth, and devalue the soul of a People the Japanese call the 'Ladder People' because one can place a ladder upon the shoulders of Blacks and climb and build fortunes. Perhaps our tendencies to focus on and strive for the approval of White Americans has us focused on how they took and acquired wealth as our measure for success.

If our relationship with Whites is fear based perhaps it creates a desperation that obscures the secrets of the hearts of those who enslaved us, and does not allow us to venture beyond the scope whites viewed us in. Maybe we have imprisoned our goals and imaginations, and trapped our ancestors in dungeons.  Perhaps we are the problem, and the conflict within our freedoms denies, and keeps us from being free. Maybe we don't own our images. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 10.8.13



How did Jesus become white?