KNOWING THE SITUATION

I wasn't really all that upset, but it immediately got my mind wondering if people over here care about the struggle that a lot of us narrowly escaped ourselves on slave ships. Since I've walked both sides of this fence, I think I was a little more able to figure out the psyche of the non-active. So I was thinking...yeah... we got it too good. Lazy Boys, 60-inch televisions, big houses, big cars. And at the same time, we got problems of our own that we have to worry about over here in our own back yards. That continent over there is pretty far away, and most of us don't feel like that's where we came from, or that those are our ancestors. I know I didn't. There's a huge disconnect. We feel like, Blacks and Africans are two different people. Embarrassing enough, even I thought for the longest time that the majority of them didn't like us, and that they thought Americans believe that we are better than them and vice versa. It took me a long time to figure out that this wasn't necessarily true for the majority. As I took the time to really try to get to know the Africans in America, I learned that a lot of them do actually like Black Americans. It took a lot of partying with them to find this out on my own ;)

So anyway, back to the meeting. Hmm. How would I describe them....FRUSTRATING is the 1st thing that comes to mind. I guess I can't say that in totality, because out of 3 hours that they meet, 5 minutes is about coming up with solutions, but 2 hours and 55 minutes of the meeting is people arguing with each other about who started what, and who knows the most about this or that. Granted, these people are all very, very well informed on politics and world news but dangit, can we talk about solutions to the problem rather than your knowledge of some conspiracy that's going on? The answer to that is umm...well umm...hell no. I remember one meeting this older gentleman stood up at the very end and said, "I came here because I KNOW there is a problem in Sudan. I came here because I wanted to hear a solution! I demand that to be the subject from now on." And that was probably the reason for the 5 minutes they did talk about it! So they mentioned a demonstration outside the World Bank. So because of those 5 minutes, I can't say it was totally pointless. Those meetings are attended by a small circle of the population that stays in that small circle. They never successfully reach out to the common person. In MY personal opinion, they look down on the common man/woman. They are always talking about how dumbed down Americans are, and that they have no idea about what's going on. Well, this may or may not be true, but their condescension is evident and will keep those circles just as they are...small.

I remember one time the question on the floor was how we reach out to the youth to educate them about relevant topics that they should know about. I stood up and suggested that we gotta pay somebody like a P Diddy (because I doubt if he would do it out of love) to be the messenger, just as the DNC did. Man, talk about an uproar. They immediately attacked the possible solution as they always do instead of trying to figure out what parts they can take from it to make it more effective. They talked about P Diddy rapping about guns and using slave labor, etc. I told them that they can't effectively talk to a kid in the ghetto about becoming politically active because (1) he is not trying to be like you, (2) he has on a pair of 5-yr-old jeans and some beat up sneakers, and (3) you have on a dashiki. Puffy has diamonds in both ears, a different girl for every season, and fo' Bentleys. Who is he more likely to listen to about what he needs to be doing? I know Puffy does wrong, but you can use that to channel negativity into a positive. But nahhh...they weren't feelin me. So I had to dip and do my own thang.