Behind the Matrix

My Personal Disappointment with the New millennium Muslim

2006-10-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

As an African American, who came of age in the 1980s, I spent most of my youth looking at the rise of Islam in the disenfranchised ghettos of black America. In my youth The Nation of Islam were men of high standards and character who wore bow ties and sold bean pies. Muslims were what men who went to prison became after they reflected on their lives and then determined that their ways were hurting their people and themselves more than helping the community. These were men, who like Malcolm X, made their way from the American Nation of Islam, to become connected the the global religion of Islam. They were men who had lived hard lives, served time in prison, and then dedicated themselves to god and improving the black community. They were, at that time all men, but they were men I admired. I respected the religion for bringing these men back to the community as productive human beings.

Although, as a Christian, at first I saw these men and their religion as something foreign to me and the way I was being raised, once I read a history book or two I soon realized that many of the blacks brought here as slaves would have been Muslim. After that rather than seeing this religion as foreign, I began to think of it as something natural to being black in America. Some nugget that my ancestors had been able to keep and to pass onto the community. A nugget that gave us guidance and reminded us of our worth as human being. However, I soon had to reconcile the image of these men of high character, building the black community, with the terrorist of Arab decent who highjacked planes, and killed people in the name of Islam. I tried for years during my childhood to understand why these men preferred to kill innocent civilians, rather than face the tyrants head on. I watched as they threw people on tarmacs, turned themselves into mobile explosives in crowed malls and restaurants, and asked how? How could a religion I associated with men of high character, reduce itself to no more than the actions of white supremacist, who cowardly terrorized minorities in America behind white sheets . In my minds eye Muslims were brave and nobel people who through their practice uplifted mankind. However, these men who highjacked planes and exploded bombs were cowards who preferred to terrorize civilians rather than take their grievance to the hall of power.

I am more and more disappointed in those who profess to be Muslim. For more often today they are people who order the deaths of civilians from mountain bunkers, or they are people who hide and secretly agree with the actions of these cowards. They applaud the release of video and audiotapes telling the infidels to convert to Islam. However, these men do not represent the Muslims I knew in my youth. The Muslims of my youth did not hide in bunkers, they walked the community and changed our hearts and souls with each handshake. The New Mellinum Muslim, like Osama Bin Laden, can't hold a candle to the men who lived hard lives, came to understand their place in the world through Islam, and then passed that on through good deeds in the community.

New Age slaves in America

2006-09-27T12:11:00.001-07:00

As an African American I find the whole illegal immigrant issue very interesting. Mostly because it appears that the people who are coming here illegally now are simply doing it for economic reasons. They are willingly allowing themselves to be treated in a discriminatory manner when it comes to pay and other aspects of life in America. A recent case in Georgia highlights this. The feds raided a poultry company and asked the compny to prove the legal status of its workforce. Unable to comply, the plant was raided and many of the workers were arrested due to the fact that they were illegal immigrants. The illegals that weren't arrested, left the city voluntarily. This had a ripple effect on the city, the businesses in the area noted a loss of revenue, and apartments that once housed up to 40 people in a single two bedroom were empti.ed. You might say how horrible, but there were positive side effects noted. The first was that the poultry plant raised its hourly salary to attact american citizens to work at the plant. One worker who was receiving minimum wage at Walmart, noted that she was able to make much more at the plant given the new higher salary. This will have an overall positive affect on the whole community as those higher paid workers begin to spend money in the community.

You might ask why is this worth writing about and what does this have to do with slavery. I have noted that those illegal immigrant who come here now are freely giving up their rights for a dollar bill, especially the illegal who come here from our southern border. My question is this: if this workforce of individuals who will give up their civil rights for no more than trinkets and substandard housing existed all this time on our southern border, then why did the they come to Africa to enslave my ansecstors. America could have brought those from the south to work on their plantations and they would have happily given up their freedom and rights for work. They would have reproduced and provided this system with alot more workers than the African Americans proved to provide. They could have saved my people the trauma of the middle passage and still have provided the US with the cheap workers that this demo-capitalist society needs to keep its fat cats rich. Look even the Mexican government thinks that there citizens make great workers in America, because they are eagerly pushing them accross the border to be exploited. This all could have happened 300 years ago and my people could have been saved the alot of grief.

The Immigration Issue an American Farce

2006-05-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am as much for legal immigration as the next guy or girl. However, I am really tired of our government wasting time on creating a new immigration law when they are not enforcing the laws that are currently on the books. The U.S. senate spent a majority of its time today agreeing to admendments to an immigration bill that they have not passed. The rest of their time was spent confirming judges and giving money away to favorite Senator pet projects.

Look this is what needs to be done about illegal immigration. First, seal the border by any means necessary. I don't care that Vincente Fox wants his citizens to leave Mexico. Don't let them enter America. If the President of Mexico doesn't even want these people in Mexico, why should we take them here. There are plenty of Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America that they can immigrate to.

Second, close down all those companies who are hiring illegal aliens, and immediately deport those illegals found on the job. Do not stop at go, donot collect 200 dolloars

Third, no guest worker program or paid Amnesty. Any illegal should be immediately deported. No medical service or welfare for the illegals. Like my mother says if you want that mooching relative to leave your house, make it uncomofortable for him to be there

The American Music Karoke Awards

2005-11-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

I am looking at the AMA awards and as one bad actress turned bad singer takes the stage, I am forced to remark how the AMA awards looks and sounds like my corner Karoke bar. However, it is much worse, because at the Karoke bar, I am at least drunk and the tone death singers actually sounds good in my inebriated state.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of ifinate space, if it were not for sobriety

The state of Black america in the 21st Century: Malcom X versus Malcolm Shabazz

2005-11-03T01:03:00.000-08:00

I have words running through my mind that to date have been unexpressable, because to express them will bring to the for many things that my fellow Americans would rather not face. I want to address the issue of Malcolm X versus his grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, because these two men, to me represent the state of Black America today. Malcolm X a man whose father was killed by white southern terrorist when he was a by became a hustler turned prohet as an adult. His later life was all about uplifting black america and finally mankind. Malcolm Shabazz was the illegitimate son of a drug addicted mother. A woman traumitized by seeing her father die at the hands of his own people, who later left her young son on her mother's doorstep.

One man, Malcolm X took his history of pain and made great strides in personal growth that he shared with all people. The other, Malcolm Shabazz, took his history of abandoment and used it as a weapon to futher destroy his own family by killing his grandmother.

Black America wake up and take control of your children, before they, like Malcolm Shabazz, turn their pain into violence acts against you.

Post Civil Rights: The rise of the uneducated Steppin Fetchit

2005-07-28T19:52:00.000-07:00

I am often amazed and horrified at how many young black people revel in their self imposed ignorance. These individuals chastise their peers who deign to get an "education" because, according to these people they are acting "white". As if only white people are priviledge enough to have or desire an education. Those who love self imposed ignorance often can be found at the feet of the new generation of uneducated thugs turned crunk hip hop stars. New age steppin fetchits will do anything for the dollar bill handed out by educated white men who make millions for every dollar they give these "music" stars. However, these "music" stars and their uneducated gun toting, hard as ice fans eagerly chase after these few dollars, instead of chasing after the education that might free them from the past. A past that they eagerly re live for the bling bling of the music industry or professional sports.

My question to those uneducated throngs is this. Why are you reliving a slaves life? If you self imposed hip hop illiterates ever read a history book you would see that those white people you think educated black people are trying to be like, never wanted you to read and write. They had laws that made it illegal for you to do so. Rather than being radical by not reading, you are just falling right into the hands of white people who wanted to keep you enslaved.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space where it not for the new age stppin fetchit

When the snow started to fall around the world

2005-05-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

One white man,with blue eyes, innocently sits in the middle of five young minority men and speaks of how the rest of the world feels about dark people. It is very real and yet surreal, as I stand watching this event. He tells them that around the world people dislike darker skinned people because dark skin represent people who work outside, farmers, the lower classes. I quickly look at the black kid among the group and say that is not true in Africa, but somehow I know that in the 21st century this is true in Africa also. And I am all the more dishearten by the fact that this is not the first time I have heard these words. I first heard about darker skinned people not being respected in societies, not from a white man, but from my lighted skinned Filipino friend who told me how people in the Philippines feel about dark skinned Filipinos. Both spoke as if discrimination against or dislike of people because they were born with the ability to produce melanin was the natural way.

I know that there is nothing natural about it. This concept was creatively crafted by the white race and reinforced by the gun, the whip and their abuse of Christianity. With their ships they left the cold ports of Europe and spread blankets of snow around the world, that to this day keeps the colorful flowers from growing to met the sun. But as is the way of nature eventually snowy winter gives way to spring. I know that although this winter has lasted for centuries spring is on its way and the colors of spring, which include white, always last through summer and well into fall. I also know that under all the snow the colors of spring are not dead, no, they are very much alive and they are preparing themselves for the day they will rise again.

I could be bound in nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I am smothering under an avalanche of whiteness

The Fallacy of Race in America - Ourstory versus History

2005-03-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

Standing in the doorway of my office, he looked like any other old successful white man. His favorite topics of discussion were his yacht, his days as a plant manager for a major corporation, and his family. However there were rumors, the kind that in previous decades would have destroyed his successful life, that there was more to this man than his skin color revealed. According to my father, these rumors were used against my great grandfather. Who was kicked out of a white regiment in the US army, when he admitted that his mother was black. As with my great grandfather this man's lack of coloring told the world nothing about his race. For in America those who are known as African-American can be a dark as the night or a white a the driven snow. Somehow the rest of America seems to be unable or unwilling to understand that the children of those stripped of their African inheritance, are their cousins. We, like most of those who call themselves Americans, are a mixed people. Ourstory is the true story of the Americas. It is time that we stop letting those who brought us here define us and limit the stories that we pass along to our children, the new millennium caretakers of Turtle Island. For those who limit us, who write history in books, love to cast people into groups. They are fascinated with the concept " group" as a means of exclusivity and superiority. This leads to the first fallacy of race in America. Americans built artificial groups and tried to give them meaning.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not for history.

An Untouchable in America

2005-03-15T00:07:00.000-08:00

I remember when I first heard about the Untouchables in India. I was appalled that a nation could so marginalize people, for no apparent reason than their parents had been marginalized. I was ten years old reading my first history book. My teacher, explaining the caste system in India, made me wince with indignation. How could those people accept that treatment? How, after so long, could anyone think that people are inferior for no other reason than they had been born to a certain group of people in the society? I thought about those poor untouchables all the way home from school. I stepped out of my all black school, and walked into my all black community. My route home was littered with liquor stores and other vices. At home, I sat in front of my television and heard about the Civil Rights Movement, integration of the school systems, death of the Black Panther leaders by the FBI; I watched documentaries of blacks who were stopped by police in northen and southern cities just for being black or being black in a good car; I watched as police beat up black people on the streets, hosed and tear gassed young black children marching for justice and equality; I watched as whites hung blacks from trees or killed blacks and threw their bodies lakes; I sat in schools that were steadily being defunded just because blacks were sitting at the table. With all of this happening around me, I only vaguely connected the plight of my people to that of the untouchable. Part of that reason was because in the next breath my teacher then told me about the freedoms in this nation. Thomas Jefferson and his declaration of independence (All men are created equal). I bought that stuff hook line and sinker back then. I wanted to believe that my nation was just to me despite everything around me and everything on Television at the time.

However, I know much better now. I know that America has a caste system. It may not be as old as the Indian caste system, but it is just as deadly to those at the bottom. It is a caste system written with the blood of black people. It is a caste system that assumes blacks have a place that they dare not reach above. It is a caste system that has actively sought to keep blacks in a place of inferiority. First with slavery then with Jim Crow and redlining, and finally, by not educating its youth. We as blacks need to connect with the international downtrodden and realize our state is not because of who we are but because of how we have been treated in this nation. We don't need a hand out or hand up. We just need to be left alone. When we build something we need it not to be destroyed.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I was born an untouchable in America.

The United States, Incorporated

2005-03-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

I must admit that I have been misguided. I realize now that as a native American I was getting pretty upset at those new immigrants who are making their way into the nation looking to only make the dollar. Especially those who send all of their money back to another country or hold dual citizenship (aka Arnold Schwartzenegger). I thought that these people were destroying the fabric of American society, the one that I remember from my middle of the country upbringing. However, I now realize that there was no fabric to destroy.

This country was started by immigrants looking to make a fast buck and the reason my people were brought to America was to help them make a fast buck. In my parents house I thought I was growing up in a country with values. Now I know , as the immigrants have made obvious again, I live in a country that is no more than a big corporation. The only thing important in this country is the dollar bill. So, in the future I will only refer to my nation as the United states, Incoporated.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinate space, were it not that I was raised in a corpor-nation.

The truth behind Liberalism in America

2005-03-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

She sits across from me. Sitting in a bastion of white American liberalism,I am looking for a job. I have read about all the good that she and her organization have done. I am confident that once she reads my resume and meets me the job will be mine. I have achieved in ways where American prognosticators of my race say that I should not. I am a black female, who is educated, experienced, child free, and not living in the ghetto or projects. I am overweight, but god damn it, I wear it well. My lover calls me a "strong black woman". I cringe at that word. Too many strong black women have ended up on the trash heap of ourstory for me to be comfortable with those words. I prefer to think of myself as a woman struggling with style, a maverick, in a hostile world.

Now across the table from me is a white woman, who I know has a good heart, but not a clue. She has worked hard at her chosen task to free the world from a chosen inequality. I sit there with mixed feelings. I know that she truely believes in helping others and I am touched by that. On the other hand, I know that this help often comes with stipulations that instead of freeing those helped, binds them forever in a neverending circle. One that will make those helped believe that they must always come to her or those like her for help. It is the state of liberalism in America. American conservatives create the downtrodden and American liberals use the downtrodden as tools to fight their conservative brothers. The only people lost in this battle are those who need help. Those who have been placed on the trash heap by the fact that they were born minority, or female, or in any way other.

I would say that I like the American white liberal, but in actuality I don't. They have often been responsible for greater crimes in America than their conservative counterpart. They single handedly were responsible for the single race high rise projects, they were responsible for redlining of america real estate and other crimes in their attempt to help the down trodden. In their attempts to help they have created a dual system that does no one service. And in being the good liberals that they are they both create the problem and try to solve it. However, they can not, because the problem is them. I am faced daily with ultra liberal. Thus I am often reminded that they are not there because they want to help, they are there because they feel better than those they are helping and they want to assuage their guilt.

In working in programs with minority youth, I often find it the ultimate contradiction, that white liberals will often go out of their way to help minority young people, while at the same time treat me, a minority adult, like some piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe. Often I am reminded of the way the slave masters treated blacks. They loved the black young people until they became adults then blacks were no more than dirt on the bottom of their shoes, something to be "kept in their place", Something inferior and less than human. White liberals cannot help people until they see those people as equals.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinate space, were it not that liberals need the downtrodden

The Suicide

2005-02-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

"That's a cool motorcycle." He winked at me as we passed each other in the hall. At first I was shocked. Then I smiled, nodded, and said "Thanks." This recognition was what I wanted when I started riding my motorcycle to my all too corporate job. I was ready to give them a reason to place me in the category of other. I was ready not to be accepted. I was tired of trying to fit into the corporate world that did not really want a black woman in its ranks, and really didn't accept black female lesbians.

I had noticed his motorcycle also. It was a retro 1960s BSA. A motorcycle that said I am very cool. The bike told the world that the rider was a serious motorcyclist. Someone who understood quality. I noticed something else as he passed me in the hallway. his eyes were red. It looked as though he had been crying.

We passed with those few words between us, and I went back to my piss poor job. I sat at my piss poor cubicle and waited for my boss to pull me into his/her office and tell me what a piss poor job I was doing. However, this day while I waited to be called into my boss's office, I also heard some people whispering. "Did you hear he jumped from the top of the building?" I heard one of my co-workers say. "Yeah he's dead. Died on impact." I heard another say. I then heard the name. It was the guy who told me my motorcycle was cool.

I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite, space, were it not that I work in corporate America

The Beginning

2005-02-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to those like me who feel that Hamlet sums up human life:
"I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinate space, were it not that I have bad dreams." My 'bad dreams' are why I was compelled to create this web log.

-Morpheus 2000-