ARE WE THERE YET?

ARE WE THERE YET?
The Delusion of A 'Post-Racial' Anything
Every time I hear some brain-damaged apologist for the status quo utter the egregiously inaccurate phrase 'post-racial,' I wince, knowing that this societal excrescence usually comes from someone who is either non-Black or a servile self-hating wanna'-be. (God only knows who came up with this misleading illusion in the first damn place!)
Understanding the - perhaps - fervent wishes of some to reach a skin color nirvana where people deal with each other as do get-along siblings, nevertheless, as someone who daily deals, one way or another, with the untreated racism/colorism extant in this hostile-to-color country, I absolutely abhor the implied feelgood untenable attempts of eager-beaver liberals to 'suck it up' - 'just-sweep-it-under-the-carpet.' (And there are far too many in the white male-dominated media in this country echoing the hateful term 'post-racial)
As far as I am concerned, whites have absolutely no right to dictate to non-whites what is 'post-racial' (whatever that means) especially while using a euphemism such as 'racial.' Those misusers should be taught/reminded that since there is actually only one hueman 'race,' - many colors - one race - the use of words, applied to hueman beings, stemming from 'race' are not correct - words such as the irritating, baldly wrong, perpetuating-of-colorism: 'bi-trans-multi-racial,' and/or 'racial groups-targeting-animosity' - anything so.
Consequently, the critical answer to the $64,000 question "Are we There Yet?" is an emphatic HELL NO! as long as:
• the unemployment rate for Black males in New York City is over 50%;
• Black police in some cities in the South can't arrest whites;
• there are counterproductive color-biased events like Arizona's Senate Bill 1070 and that state's colorist banning of "Ethnic Studies;"
• cops nationwide continue slaughtering Black male sons with impunity; (cops of any color don't shoot white males in the back!)
• Black children prefer white dolls to Black ones;
• idiots speak of 'reverse racism;' (Racism is racism - but we at the Institute for "Interracial" Harmony, Inc. prefer the accurate word 'colorism')
• prom-time in many states is divided into Black and white proms; (What happens with the Red, Yellow, Tan, Olive and Brown children?)
• misguided folk wish for a 'colorblind' society; (don't try to obliterate my beautiful color!)
• the NYC Fire Department firefighters are disproportionately white and male;
• cops nationwide think it's OK to handcuff young Black children;
• predatory media outlets - exist misguidedly engaging in - like CNN recently - 'skimming-for-ratings,' in simplistic and inaccurately-worded 'studies' of color-foibles in society; ("What are you teaching your kids about race?") YUCK!
• miseducated-in-America masses continue to put an 's' on the word 'race' as it applies to the one-race huemanity; (I spell this word with an 'e' because, whether it shows or not, most huemans have melanin in their makeup since they all have descended from the originating Black Africans)
• the naieve think that just because individual Black (and other people of color) attain various positions in society (like U.S.A. President Barack) problems/inequities based on people's skin color are automatically erased;
• seven year old Ayana Jones - a Black child - is shot to death by marauding cops in Detroit; (when last did cops kill a 7 year old white child in a so-called raid?
Oh, I could go on and on listing the color-based inequities but suggesting a potential solution is much more productive:
Test every decision-maker who has to render decisions about others with the *www.racismtest.org and where dysfunctional responses to differences in color and culture are revealed - don't fire 'em - mandate that they be Ethnotherapeutically counselled until they can THINK STRAIGHT about color and culture.
That this remedy/healing is urgently-required worldwide, because of pandemic untreated racism/colorism, cannot be credibly-denied by honest people.
The sooner this important tool for fomenting dialogue about colorism in a non-threatening arena is adolpted by Heads of State - healthier societies can be achieved and at least three-quarters of the world's majority (people of color) can receive a welcome "OH YES!" answer to the thorny question: "Are we there yet?"
Carol Taylor R.N.
First Black U.S.A. Flight Attendant
Institute For "Interracial" Harmony, Inc. President/Co-founder

REPARATIONS: Equity From A Hostile-To-Color Country?

REPARATIONS: Equity From
A Hostile-To-Color Country?

The United States of America cannot stand in front of the world - three-quarters population people of color - with any credibility as a moral nation until it repays its long-overdue debt to the descendants of enslaved BlackFolk.

There is ample precedence to support claims of financial remuneration to Black individuals whose enslaved ancestors built this country and who themselves daily undergo Post Slavery Stress Syndrome from the inherited untreated racism/colorism of that colorist inhuemanity.

If the U.S.A. could pay Reparations to the Japanese poeple it interned in a depraved display of colorist ethnic targeting - and it did - why isn't it an equally-compelling moral responsibility for it to pay Reparations to Black hueman beings who, even today, still suffer from inherited continuous slings and arrows of untreated racist/colorist U.S.A. kidnapping/ internment?

Moreover, an integral part of financial reparation due the heirs of enslaved Black Africans is for this country to overhaul, revise and repair its eurocentric colorist education system, which has obdurately refused to this very day to teach its hapless students (of all colors) who their most distant ancestors/relatives were: Black Africans in Black Africa. Instead of teaching that truth, alas, the overweening incorrect thrust of U.S.A. academe remains white and European. (Refer to the recent counterproductive, colorist banning of Ethnic Studies by miseducated Arizonians and the prejudicial Arizona SB1070 bill supported by the equally-miseducated Governor!)

This hostile-to-color country urgently needs to stop thus manufacturing colorist miseducated graduates who will take their miseducation out on the world's people of color in too many ways to herein list.

Indeed, how, with any sense of credibility, can this country continue to send out into the world its ambassadors who've been so egregiously miseducated as to who they themselves really are and from whom they've descended? Adequately-educated other-country diplomats can only be snidely laughing behind their obligatory masks of politesse. How utterly embarrassing this should be to anyone who doesn't have a colorist thick skin!

• The U.S.A., to ever gain its moral standing with the rest of the majority-of-color world, must 1. stop with its bigstick warring 'do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do' external posturing;
• 2. internally repair its colorist education sysdum and
• 3. pay up on its immorally-long-overdue debt to that portion of its own society which is Black and descendant from those kidnapped/interned Black Africans.

I maintain that until this Reparations Moral Imperative is undertaken, to speak of 'democracy' or indeed, of national 'security' is tatamount to merely wallowing in cognitive dissonance.

BLESSED WITH ESTROGEN:

BLESSED WITH ESTROGEN:
Gaining, Regaining and Maintaining Female Self-Esteem

To be female is a wondrous thing. In fact, whenever I want to upset a misogynist (male or female) who delights in engaging in an inerited 'put down' of women, I inform the sicko that science has proved that, at conception before gender specialization, all huemans are female!

I have, at successive levels of psychological growth in my peripatetic life, gradually become only too aware of the enormous, unfair burden most societies continuously bestow on the backs of individuals born with more estrogen than testosterone.

This 'Adam vs Eve' burden is maintained throughout the lives of females and in the - unlikely - event that one who is female recognizes the full import of the inherited gender discrimination (which outrageously has her earning the automatic 'less than he' salary) hamstringing frustration at the widespread hormonal inequity can cause her not only to think submissively but to act submissively her whole life merely on the basis of being born on the distaff side of her family!

There is a remedy for this pandemic iniquitous, counterproductive societal marginalization: from birth teach your daughter that she is special; show her that she controls her own thought processes; instill in her from early on that she is part of the majority population in this male-dominated world and that the domination springs from a serious maleducation of the masses and doesn't necessarily have to last forever. Ready For The Revolution?

Teach her asap that backward-ass habits can be changed and just because 'it's traditional,' doesn't mean tradition can't be reversed and lame excuses for it can't be refuted.

Demonstrate to her that such change must be undertaken to "subvert the dominant paradigm" which - among other injustices - even has most media photographs of married couples (men and women) giving his name but describing her as "his wife" - without according her a name of her own - "Mrs. John Doe," as though she's merely an appendage undeserving of individual recognition/ acknowledgement.

In fact, as I in late life came to an understanding of the complete and continuing subjugation of girls/women, I realized that I had swallowed wholesale the - questionable - desireability of giving up my own birth name and taken on the name of my husband. As I've struggled to shake off society's negative and misogynist condtioning I've realized how complex a matter it is to 'take back' my 'maiden' name and shuck my married one! Major battle.

So teach your daughter that not only is she 'as good' as any other hueman, but she has every inherent right to call herself-and be called by- her at-birth name; she also has the right to choose any name she prefers!

All females should be taught that they weren't brought into this world for anyone to damage their skin, beat them or sexually or psychologically abuse them. Each should be taught martial arts to protect themselves; they - and no one else - are responsible for their own eggs; that they would not bleed every month if they went onto raw foods (menstruation is NOT 'a natural state' for females!) and that if they love themselves, they'll be lovable, attractive and won't become prey for some goodlooking predator. They should learn the song which says "You don't own me!"

Before anyone calls me a 'bra-burning, strident, women's-libber,' let me state unequivocally that I am not a 'feminist,' I am a 'peopleist' - I truly believe, irrespective of what one's major hormonal make-up is, that we all should be treated by the content of our character and not by the happenstance of our gender. I believe in the equality of huemans and so strongly abjure the status quo of society's knee-jerk deference to testicular dominance.

And nothing is more illustrative of that arrogant male dominance than the spectre of a mostly all-(male)white U.S.A. Congress attempting to dictate to females what we should do with our bodies. Even discussing abortion is patently a big fat red herring; they would never ever even discuss legislation forbidding males to have vasectomies or force them to have children they didn't want!

In that vein, teach your daughter to support a revolutionary revision of the world's education systems - once and for all purging them of their preferential 'for-the-masculine' presentations of history and of current events. In fact, teach her that such a revision is necessary to accord equity for females in every arena of people activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, religion, politics, sex and war.

For this to happen, of course, means that every female will have to be formally taught that the development of a healthy self-esteem as a female on this male-dominant planet is crucial to her well-being and to that of society in general. ROCK-(ETTE)ON!

WHERE YOU'RE LIVING

WHERE YOU'RE LIVING

My philosophy is wherever you're residing - commit to community 'uplifment!'

So, when I was living in Barbados, West Indies, registered as a citizen on the basis of being married to a Bajan (turned out to be a fourteen year blast); bore a lil' Bajan baby boy in Queen Elizabeth Hospital delivered by the son of the former Premier; was Secretary to Lord Beaverbrook's grandson - among other interesting experiences, lemme list just some of my civic donations for those who are unaware of 'em:

* planned and implemented the island's first Women's Political Caucus;

* named and helped Maude Wilkins start the island's first consumer organization - The Bajan Consumer League;

* provided office space and organizational assistance to the island's first Barbados Building Society;

* Set up and ran the island's first Babysitting business with trained-in-First-Aid sitters;

* helped teacher John Cumberbatch and others bring the Derek Walcott Trinidad/Tobago actors to Barbados (their first overseas 'gig');

* helped organize Jeannette Layne Clarke's Working Organization for Women;

* rescued a young female Canadian tourist from the clutches of the Coleridge Street Police Headquarters police (she'd called me hysterically from there asking for my help) - they'd grabbed her at six am one scary morning saying she was 'illegal;'

* was instrumental in starting- and became Advertising Manager for- the island's first women's magazine - "HERS;"

* helped form the Ursuline Convent School's first Parent/Teacher's Association (Dr. Kerr became its President);

* sat on The Commission To Liberalize The Abortion Legislation of Barbados with Dr. Hoyos;

* was responsible for Barrbados bringing Canadian Women's Activist Florence Byrd to advise the setting up of The Barbados National Enquiry Into The Status of Women - when I heard that she was vacationaing in St. James, I drove down to have a three hour conference with her. She said, "Carol, get your women's organization, WOW, to ask the Barbados Government - Errol Barow was Prime Minister - to ask the Canadian Government - Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister - to send me down here to advise, as I did for Canada, how to set up a National Enquiry Into the Status of Women and I'll gladly come!" So said: so done. However, even though it was I who initiated the entire series of events, appreciated Dr. 'Sleepy' Smith's fine support, I was never invited to sit on the commission which held the island-wide Hearings spreading the word/necessity for the upcoming Enquiry!

* planned and implemented the first Candlelight Demonstration at the newly-built National Stadium for the Bajan Consumer League Membership Drive (candles & matches donated by the Industrial Park merchants) - where, for the first time, the historically warring political party Representatives - DLP AND BLP - appeared together on the same platform;

* planned and gave the island's first-time-there wildly-sussessful Art Exhibit at the Coleridge Street Police Headquarters (for the Trinidad/Tobago artist Bosco Holder);

* was the only person who visited the Jamaican Journalist Carmen Baily in the murky, musty, moldy, smelly 'Remand' cell behind the Coleridge Street Police Headquarters (not even her Attorney Tom Adams, the Jamaican High Commission staff, The Jamaican Women's organization, the Queen Elizabeth Blood Bank staff (where Carmen had taken an entire soccer team to donate blood) or the Editors of the local papers she'd been writing for visited her)!

* wrote well-received articles for "The Daily News," The Advocate," "The Nation," "The Beacon," newspapers and for "The Bajan" magazine;

* started and edited "The Barbados Nursing Journal" - 'nursing' not 'nurse's' so that all of the medical and ancillary workers would feel free to contribute their writings;

* personally raised $6,500 in donations in one week for the first Barbados-Hosted Caribbean Boy Scout Jamboree (Directed by Colonel Laurence Gordon Quintyne MBE);

* years before the building of Sherbourne Convention Centre, wrote a newspaper column calling for a National Convention centre (not that any credit for such an innovative column would ever be publicly acknowledged!)

* orchestrated the donations of 1. A Printing Press and 2. a full set of Collier's Encyclopedia to the Barbados Boy Scouts Association;

* helped to revolutionize the island's previously all-white male-dominated advertising industry by publicizing the fact that it is the island's women who make the majority of consumer brand purchase decisions, who spend the money on consumer goods and are the dominant numbers of registered voters (in my 'information box' for 'HERS' magazine)- thereafter, the island's newspapers for the first time, began publishing a weekly 'Women's Section' and the political parties established 'Women's planks in their platforms - especially after I personally planted a notice that the women of Barbados were considering starting a Women's Political Party!';

* after personal research into what plans - as late as December 1974 - the month before the 1975 International Women's Year worldwide celebrations - that anyone had made for observing that important event - (no one had) - planned, named and implemented the Inernational Women's Year Steering Committee with the able support of and donation of the Black Rock Cultural Center's Catholic Church Father Malachy Clune; this was the first function of the newly-built centre;

* suggested the Barbadian Woman of the Year IWY competition (Mignon Greenidge won);

* got the renowned Barbadian artist Omowale to design the turtleshell IWY Pin (he did it for free!);

* refused an invitation by Cuba's Fidel Castro to represent Barbadian womanhood in Cuba for IWY - (I said I was not 'representative' of the island's majority females - so Billie Miller became the representative, and found herself surprisingly-spirited all the way to Moscow, Russia before being delivered to Cuba for the ceremonies;

* convinced eleven Barbadian families to purchase Colliers Encyclopedias in one week, beating all of the other salespersons in the Caribbean - thereby putting Barbados on the world map in encyclopedia sales;

* went with a mother (working at the local main TV corporation) who'd bought a pair of shoes for her schoolchild which had 'burst out' the first week - when the Broad Street shop owner'd refused to replace the shoes or refund her money she called me. I went, as a Bajan Consumer League representative, and convinced the shop owner to stop trying to send the distraught mother to the shoe manufacturer but instead to do the right thing and refund her hard-earned money to her).

Have I committed - or what!

Send comments to: littleblackbook@juno.com