Category: Practical Politics

Colonial education in Africa was fundamentally aimed at teaching Africans that Europeans were superior in everything, and that the purpose of African life was to follow whatever Europeans said and go wherever they led. Africans were to stay divided and quarreling among themselves, and the only unity they were to achieve was in their agreement to allow Europeans to do whatever they wanted in Africa and to Africans. Colonial education was aimed at teaching Africans to stay dependent on White outsiders.

Okay, President Barack Obama has committed himself to do an adventure episode with Bear Grylls. Hmmm. It will certainly show the strength he still has left in his presidency after the kitchen sink has been thrown at him these last seven-plus years.

At first glance, the Iran nuclear deal appears to be another “other people’s problem” issue that does not relate to the everyday “bread-and-butter” concerns of the nationwide Black community. It’s not about another negative police relationship in which the police-as-warriors conflicts with the police-as-guardians. It’s not even about Cuba, or immigration (which both affect the Black community) or Obamacare. No, it doesn’t at first appear to be all that important to the Black community.

At first glance, the Iran nuclear deal appears to be another “other people’s problem” issue that does not relate to the everyday “bread-and-butter” concerns of the nationwide Black community. It’s not about another negative police relationship in which the police-as-warriors conflicts with the police-as-guardians. It’s not even about Cuba, or immigration (which both affect the Black community) or Obamacare. No, it doesn’t at first appear to be all that important to the Black community.

Cementing his role as the African Diaspora president and hero of everywhere Africans, President Barack Obama spoke recently to a huge audience at the African Union headquarters in Addis Abba, Ethiopia. This was the headquarters featuring the great statue of Pan Africanist Kwame Nkrumah outside welcoming guests in, and the headquarters built for the African Union by the Chinese. The latter is part of the reason Mr. Obama was there.

Lately we’ve been assaulted daily with details of speeches and sound bites from a deluge of Republican presidential hopefuls, especially Donald Trump. Sorry Republicans, none of you have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the presidency in 2016. However comfortable and likeable a candidate the Republicans finally put up—most probably Jeb Bush—it really doesn’t matter. Barring some major scandal or national catastrophe that frightens everybody, a Democrat—most probably Hillary Clinton—will win.

One news source reported this week that one of its investigators interviewed one of Dylann Roof’s cousins, who said that Roof had been trying to romance a young White girl recently who rejected him in favor of hooking up with a local Black youth. That, buttressed by listening over and over to loud White-power music, drove Roof to the point of his dastardly deed in Emanuel A.M.E. Church, said the cousin. That rationale may or may not have substance.

In February 2014, to add to the public policy executive order he’d already issued in July 2012 regarding assisting African American youth to overcome the systemic obstacles against their success in the USA, President Barack Obama issued an order to establish My Brother’s Keeper, a distinctive governmental approach toward supporting thousands, even millions of African American young men toward positive growth and success in this country.

One distinctive and unfortunate part of African American culture is the too-often repeated exercise of public rants against each other. This habit is not ameliorated because it has a very long-standing tradition within the community, nor is it okay just because both famous and not-so-famous Black folk engage in it.

Clearly, being Black means having a ton of obstacles relentlessly in one’s way forward. Some such hurdles are self-imposed (e.g., too much pork-eating, too much greasy fried food, too much self-hate, too much backward thinking when thinking at all, etc.). However, most hurdles we face are social-political realities in the U.S.A. (e.g., too frequent police perception of Blacks as criminals or troublemakers, too frequent disregard for Black folk in general, an avalanche of negative social stereotypes in medicine, education, economics, etc.). Letting ourselves go to float on these daily stormy waters is a distinct recipe for death and disaster. Some kind of way, though, most of us survive.