BLACK IS A PHILOSOPHY

BLACK IS A PHILOSOPHY
by BlAcktivist Elder Carol Taylor
(First Black U.S.A. Flight Attendant)

Don't you just love the idea of 'a sleeping giant?' I do. Maybe such appeal comes from remembrances of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Gulliver's Travels."

Anyway, the emerging and escalating belief in Black communities that Blackfolk - woefully unorganized - are collectively 'a sleeping giant,' has been, ironically, fueled by the white male-dominated media coverage of Barack Obama's energetic and well-run campaigning for the Presidency of the United States of America.

(I also love the concept of 'Karma;' 'What goes around comes around' and 'Nature abhors a vacuum')

Psychologists have long utilized certain words to measure association capabilities of their patients: "Yin-yang," "big-small," "sad-happy," "rich-poor," "tall-short" and "Black-white." (Of course huemans do come in other colors)

However, as this country, from slavery days, has evolved into a majority-white 'us' and a minority Black (and others of color) 'them,' anyone studying social movements must take into serious consideration the nature of jusxtapositional ideaologies; if there is a generalized conept of "whiteness," then there is a consequent corollary of "Blackness" in people's minds. Hence the idea of judging a person by the color of her/his skin; the fact that this practice is unhealthy, illogical and unfair doesn't alter its reality.

One of the eminent anti-colorist Tim Wise's favorite juxtapositions is 'privileged underprivileged.' And more and more public speakers in the U.S.A. are parotting the phrase "white privilege," so it isn't a great leap of consciousness to envision "Black underprivilege." Consquently, if there is a 'philosophy of 'whiteness (the sum of the ideas and convictions of an individual or group), there is evidently a contrapuntal (associational) 'philosophy of Blackness.' (Not that I believe that 'whiteness' should be the 'norm' for every comparison either!) (Possibly 'philosophies of Red, Yellow, Brown, Olive and Tan' will follow)

But what does it mean to be Black in America? (U.S.A.) And if one subscribes to the nomenclature "Black," does one automatically pursue a 'Black philosophy?' And how does such a follower resolve the emotional/psychological dichotomy-of-identification about which W.E. du Bois and Frederick Douglass and many others talked so many years ago? (WABC TV "Nightline's Ted Koppel to Jesse Jackson: "Are you a Black man or an American?"

Additionally, a major contribution to the widespread concept of 'Blackness' as an entity is the usage of the word 'race,' to indicate color, or more usually, 'Black.' And isn't this usage based on a bogus unscientific construct of 'different races' (instead of the accurate one hueman race) along with the mistaken notion that Black,' 'Yellow,' 'Red,' 'Brown' and 'Olive' people are separate and inferior 'races?' Unfortunately academicians in the U.S.A. stubbornly perpetuate untreated racism/colorism by doggedly repeating - 'follow-fashion' - the inaccurate word 'races,' ad infinitum and nauseam, when there is no 's' on the word 'race' when it comes to hueman beings!

White and Black pollsters traditionally looking at Blacks as an economic entity, say that Black consumers spend over $600 Billion a year and that Blacks and other people of color are about to put Black Barack Obama into the White House as President of the United States of America; isn't it way past time for Blacks (and others) to admit that 'the sleeping giant' is waking and that there is such an entity as 'A Black Philosophy?' And shouldn't that admission involve fast-track adoption of utilizing www.discussrace.com and www.racismtest.org programs to flush away heretofore untreated racism/colorism from a society pretending to be progressive? How long are people of color prepared to be treated as second-class huemans, stopped, frisked, beaten, disrespected, jailed and killed merely because we wear skins of observable melanin? (Log on to www.refdesk.com - "Hate Crimes")

END THE INSANITY: HEAL, AMERICA!