be real Black for me.

African people born in amerikkka are anti-establishment by nature. it’s in our blood. we should not run from or be ashamed by it.

we must embrace it.

issue arises when those who haven’t accepted their own nature so they speak and treat other African people with disownment. we are so anti-establishment that some of us can’t handle it. it’s too Black. it’s too strong.

being unapologetically Black is like coffee. need some creamer and sugar to weaken it. to dilute it. to make it so far from coffee you barely know you’re drinking it. it’s too black. need something white to make it palatable because when it’s all black, it’s too hard to take. drinking coffee with no creamer or anything white in it, you might make a face when you taste it. you might be upset that no one told you it would be that strong. you might be bothered and won’t ever try coffee again because of how off putting it was. but coffee drinkers who thoroughly like coffee, will drink it undiluted. unapologetic.

my suggestion? be real Black for me.

PALM TREES.

have any of you seen palm trees ever in your life? i have seen palm trees in Los Angeles, California., Miami, Florida., and Las Vegas, Nevada. of course, not all are native. in fact MOST are imported. that doesn’t take away from the fact these are palm trees. no one will dispute a palm tree when they see one. but a reality to leave with is the state with the most indigenous palm trees is Texas.

last time i asked a friend of mine “what are you?” she responded Filipino. last time i asked my best friend what is he, he said I’m Ethiopian. i asked another friend and his response was Vietnamese. these people were not born in the Philippines, Ethiopia, nor Vietnam. two of them only visited their homeland once and it was more than ten years ago. they still don’t have symptoms of homelessness. they might have been born elsewhere, but they know where home is.

i am not american amerikkkan. do not call me amerikkkan. amerikkka doesn’t consider ME amerikkkan. it’s the same as putting me on a Lakers jersey doesn’t automatically make you a Laker. i mean the staff and players might, but i don’t get paid like they do because deep down they know i am not a Laker. i don’t reap the benefits as actual Lakers do. they just need my support. the numbers. it makes them money. i get nothing from it.

i am an African born in amerikkka.

Kwame Nkrumah said i’m not African because I was born in Africa. I’m African because Africa was born in me.

so many Africans call themselves African Americans as they hold on to this false promise amerikkka been told us won’t come to fruition. we have been given a check but not allowed to cash it. they don’t really want anything to do with the African part, it’s just an insurance policy. something to fall back on so they won’t look like bad. Italians will tell you exactly what they are. with pride.

we are so quick to defend amerikkka and prosecute and quit on Africa like amerikkka ever stood up for us. some of us act like most of our ancestors weren’t kidnapped and sold and shipped to a foreign land that was in the midst of being colonized itself. we defend americanism to the death. literally. we’ll wave flags outside our house while actual amerikkkans won’t dare to wave a Black Lives Matter flag or speak up for us. we’ll fight in wars against people who don’t have a beef with us all to protect white supremacy. white supremacy is what led to the very war.

we defend them and disown us. and that is my problem. we always say “you can congratulate someone without talking down on someone else.”

we can do that generally, but why can’t we practice that with our own culture, history, and people?

we have an identity crisis. we KNOW we aren’t “African amerikkkans.” we KNOW the country hates us and we hate it deep down… but we fight to keep some false status and identity instead of embracing who and what we really are. we run away from our African culture to hug americanism.

our problems can be fixed relatively quickly. most of it is mental. we have to love ourselves as much as we hate racism. what we are lacking is cultural commitment. once we are dedicated to ourselves more than we are dedicated to appease white society, we will move forward in a thirty days. i promise. once we commit to the collective over individualism, we will JUMP over the problems. i promise you. just do one thing and read the title of this article.

be real Black for me.

STOP WAITING TO BE ACCEPTED BY WHITE SOCIETY.

Black people created languages on the spot to exchange thoughts with other Black folk and guess who have problems with it? other Black folk.

words that can be spelled, said, and understood, we get told “that’s not a word.” meanwhile, white people use pig Latin and no one (besides those who know it) can spell, say or understand any of it but it’s respected as a language. nobody say that’s not a word. we might say its weird. it’s something white people do but it’s understood as a language.

you go to other parts of a country and you’ll find whole new dialects. but you don’t go to their world and tell them they’re wrong. but we do when we go down the street to our fellow neighbors.

i say “finna” and catch hell. it’s not a word… until it’s accepted by white people. we’ll use phrases that didn’t mean anything before but something currently and no one has a problem. when something is dope, we say it’s fire. when something is fun, we say it’s lit. these are new sayings we as a culture have made and accepted. but when it’s singular words, stop the press.

well guess what. “finna” was added to the dictionary in 2020. the same with sharent (a parent who overshares pictures and posts on social media). ten years from now, it’ll be a commonly used word but today, it’s not. we have to wait for white people to accept us then we’ll accept each other.

i don’t but a lot of us call people Sir and Ma’am as “a sign of respect.” but when i call Black men King as a sign of love and honor, it’s corny. it’s trendy. when i call a Black woman Queen, we get told “it’s patronizing” or “flirtatious.” J.Cole came out with a song and called the lady he was talking to a queen, and Black women focused on THAT. you serious? we do this to ourselves all while marrying white people norms.

that must stop. today.

people want to be YOU all over the world. the public waits for you to do something for it to be cool. we move culture. they know that. i know that. now it’s time to embrace it. we are powerful. love yourself.

be real Black. like NaS said, Ultra Black. opposite of Doja Cat.

CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND you.

see when a celebrity says something or it catches wind, it’s all good. but when a person like me does it, it’s kickback. it’s “you’re being ridiculous now.” it’s “but why tho…” because people like me don’t really matter. we value people who look the part. i’m not a white man. white men do and say whatever. their power comes from others believing they have power. that’s all. my lack of power comes from me being a Black man.

but i don’t want any money, any gold, any glory if my people are being killed. if my people are being oppressed and played. no matter the level of freedom i feel i’m in, i’m not as long as others aren’t. i’ll trade every cent and bone today if it secured my people being free.

we value money as respect. we think the more money you have the more intelligence you are. the more intelligence you are, the more respect you’ll be given. the more respect, the more power you’ll have.

un-intelligent way of thinking i must say. donald tr*mp has tons of power and money, and graduated from an Ivy League school. but no one ever says he is intelligent. they say quite the opposite. but that’s the thought process in every day life. if bill g*tes says something, people listen. it can be on politics, medicine, international law. whatever. when a white man speaks, people listen. but what about money? people not only listen, they believe! they follow. see how that works. see how we perpetuate white supremacy every day?

but when i say billionaires shouldn’t exist and if they do, it’s imperative they must be taxed extremely higher, people look at me like i disrespected them. like they’re making anywhere close to one hundred thousand dollars (poor people running to the defense of the exploitive rich class is a whole other conversation). when i speak on that, it’s you’re being outrageous. but guess who else said the rich should be taxed way more? Bill G*tes. you know, the second richest person in the world. ooooooohhh nooooow let’s listen. he spittin FACTS huh? the white man is speaking. the Black man just spews rhetoric, the white man talks the truth!

SOLUTION TIME.

i am not saying i got all the answers but i got some of them.

the most simple key to life for us: just be real Black for me.

always lead with love. start with love. this whole post has been strictly on LOVE. accepting yourself and me.

our mind has to be revolutionized and our body will follow. we as a people have to stay on code. at all times. there is no time for public beefs and getting out the car to ride passenger with the opps.

we are the only people i know who claim to be so “pro” themselves but do the most to run away from responsibilities that are tied to it.

“pro Black” when it comes to culture, we loooove HBCUs. but wouldn’t dare date and marry our own people. not pro Black with family. and we defend it.

or we’re pro Black about family but won’t dare spend money in our community. hate each other. i have to convince you to support us. not buying a thing Black owned because “you know how we do it.”

or we’ll spend money with our people but dissociate with our roots. we hate the idea of Africa. we shun and disown our very own mother for the abusive father who wants nothing to do with us.

you don’t convince Vietnamese people to shop with their own. or marry their own. or have pride in their culture. with us, we pick and choose how Black we need to be.

but be real Black for me. that’s the solution.

we have to have an undying love for African culture. Africans just on a different land mass. we do not have to like everything. there’s a difference. but we have to understand and accept it despite our personal upbringings and preferences. we don’t have to wear a Kente cloth outfit everywhere but we must love and respect the culture.

we must study and go back. READ PAN AFRICAN WORK. PROMISE ME OR YOURSELF TO READ PAN AFRICAN WORK. one of the most digestible works is Kwame Ture x From Black Power to Pan Africanism. IT WILL PAY OFF. WE CANNOT GO ALL THROUGH COLLEGE AND ADULT LIFE AND READ ROMAN THEORY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND NEGLECT OUR OWN PEOPLE. WE CANNOT READ ALL OF THESE PHILOSOPHERS WHO DIDN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK HUMANITY. IN FACT, HATED AFRICANS AND BELIEVED WE WERE INFERIOR AND THEN GLOSS OVER OUR OWN THINKERS WHO LOVE AND APPRECIATE DEDICATED THEIR TIME TO LIBERATE US. WE CANNOT PRIDE OURSELVES TO BE EXPERTS IN MATH AND SCIENCE, SUBJECTS THAT DON’T TRULY TELL US ANYTHING UNLESS WE’RE INVESTED IN THAT FIELD. SUBJECTS THAT DON’T HOLD OVER AND HELP US WITH ANYTHING BESIDES MONEY, DOESN’T MOVE OUR PEOPLE. BUT AVOID HISTORY OF THE BLACK MAN AND WOMAN.

we lie to ourselves. when we say we like someone, we want to know everything about that someone. you like a woman, you try to discover her. you study her. you know about her history. we cannot say we love our people and CHOOSE not to know about our people. we cannot say we love our people and only accept what mainstream tells us. WE must do the work and learn.

why Pan African? it’s the unification of Africans all across the world. understanding we’re the same just with different families. you might have different ideas and traditions than your cousin because they were raised in another household. they might eat different foods, ride different cars, even pray to a different god, but they’re still your cousins. once we realize that we’re all oppressed by the same bully and we’re under the same umbrella just different houses, we can work together. Pan Africanism has helped me become more united and understanding with my distant family and ultimately more loving.

our history was told to us from the POV of the slave master. all of our history is MLK, slavery and Egypt. we are thinkers. we are originators. the only explorers weren’t from Spain or Dutch. we must view our past more positively and way more expansively. not just because it’s necessary but because it’s historically true. our history did not start four hundred years ago. it did not start with us in chains. get to know yourself by getting to know your past.

there were Afrikan people on this land mass before the white woman (the queen of Spain) gave the pass to the white man to conquer and enslave Black folk.

before i knew i was Black, my dad told me his favorite super hero was this man named Muhammed Ali. he had pride in himself and told his oppressors “No” “I am the greatest. like it or not” and then he actually went out and fought literally, physically and mentally. my dad played nothing but Prince and Ice Cube. my mom played nothing but DMX, the Martin Show and In Living Color. i remember walking to school in a white tank top, shorts, and fake timbs think i WAS DMX. i knew nothing but Black culture. pops born in Oakland, raised in Berkeley during the times the Black Panther Party was making moves. moms born in Compton, raised in Oakland. my point is before i knew i was Black, i loved Blackness. i admired everything about Black culture. that’s what i saw. then i looked at myself and saw me in them. i saw my Black mom and loved how she looked. saw pops and saw how strong he was. then i realized i was just like their heroes. i was born victorious before knowing.

they were real Black for me.

you don’t know how many times i talked to the president of my last job about getting Juneteenth off over the past four years. before it was popular to say Black lives matter. you don’t know how many times people advised me to not get a hand tattoo at 18 years old because i was people already saw Black men. how detrimental that would inevitably be. nobody said anything when i was a store manager two years after high school. don’t try to be accepted by people. lead with your real self and those who accept you will. those who don’t won’t.

TO BLACK MEN.

be real Black for me.

revolution is either thorough or doomed. we are the most integral piece of this puzzle so let me tell you this… the most revolutionary act a Black man can do is to marry/partner with a Black woman and build strong impenetrable forces. defy systems and societal rules and build their own community and systems for Black people. really wanna spice it up have? have kids and make sure those kids are gamed up and continue the fight you’re doing and tweak it for current time. repeat.

like chess, the queen is cherished. protect her with your heart but when the king is out, the game is over.

“Black women hold down the Black household” yeah it’s no secret white supremacy intentionally attempts to take out us in every setting.

we get told we’re the weakest link but we and they know we make the chain strong. we get told how garbage we are every time we turn on any form of media. so much so that Black women start to believe it. don’t get mad at them. they’re victims of white supremacy just like us. we are NOT the enemy. there is no time to hate on each other. we are NOT the enemy. we are victims of white supremacy. we are victims of patriarchy. we are victims of capitalism.

we get played and stones thrown at us while being the firmest. continue being race first, Black man. we ALL need it. even those who don’t realize it yet. but do not be insensitive to our sisters who have a set of unique oppression. we will not compete in the struggle olympics with our women.

it’s no surprise Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko, John Huggins, Bunchy Carter, Fred Hampton, Maurice Bishop, Martin, Ali, Malcolm X were all targeted with their women at home. these are all warning shots at what will happen if we keep keeping on.

Black men understand the many lonely nights i’ve had. yall new to this social distance thing, we’re used to it. people been staying far away from us for centuries. i was told once that i surround myself with Black nationalists… i looked around like when was this and where was i? take me there whenever it was. you don’t know how lonely it gets. there’s about forty million Black people in amerikkka. more than 90 percent do not share my thoughts and principles. i am the minority. always am.

Black men have very little wiggle room for “mistakes.” i know this because i see so many of us get killed for wearing hoodies. i see us get killed and ridiculed for being human. for going to starbucks. yall don’t know how stressful it is to be immersed in the struggle for liberation all while maintaining good health. center our lives on the community or don’t care at all, we will be criticized. Black men have the pressures of being focused on every place we enter. family, stores, relationships, jobs. i have been blessed with having a high tolerance and unlimited patience. asking for nothing in return but respect. Black men are just demanding respect.

my high tolerance and patience has led me to carry your crosses and make sure our people are good while simultaneously making sure i’m good. but don’t ask me why i barely smile in pictures. you cannot possibly understand the pressures. the need for therapy for JUST being a Black man. not because of a natural disaster, being sexually abused, or even emotionally or mentally beaten up (by individuals at least. by systems? since birth). Black men seek therapy for simply being Black and male.

you don’t understand the feeling of being misunderstood by people who look like you about ideas to free people who look like you. you can’t grasp the feeling i feel when trying to bust moves just to be reminded by the brothers’ fates from above. we get ostracized when we have original and uncomfortable thoughts. we get made into caricatures by everyone all throughout the day when we have ultra Black ideas. we get labeled once honorary terms now a derogatory “hoteps.”

we get called thugs and scrubs then get killed and all of a sudden cared about. we deserve so much more than that. die and be a hero or live and be the villian. that’s our path. that’s why i care so much about legacy. about passing ideas and my name down. i’m making my legacy today.

Trayvon was martyred like Martin to a King.

they’ll call you corny if you’re dressed like Russell Wilson or irresponsible if you have bling, King.

have standards, they’ll emasculate you. if you don’t, “he’ll f*ck anything,” King.

if you’re attuned with your emotions, you’re weak. not reachable if you’re a rock like The Thing, King.

you’re a waste of talent and a stereotype if you rap, but gay if you can sing, King.

damned if you do, damned if you don’t do a thing, King.

they don’t understand, but i get what you mean, King.

they’ll call you out your name to make you react. thug, p*ssy, B. it’ll sting, King.

won’t help you when you’re defeated, but when you’re flying, they’ll clip your wings, King.

they’ll come to you when you’re healthy but sell you when you’re injured. cash cow, cha ching, King.

capitalism is brutal. it cripples our community with no sling, King.

they’ll give you everything to kill yourself. money. drugs. women. lead you to the tree and even give you a thick string, King.

they’ll celebrate you if you’re down, but they’ll change like the seasons if you spring, King.

“Black men don’t like me” but they only wanted you as a fling, King.

they just want to test you out, sit on you and have you motion them back and forth, like a swing, King.

they’ll root against you if you change your name to Hakeem, King.

count you out before they even see what you can bring, King.

but i’m rooting for you today and forever. not only when you step out on the balcony and they let them shots ring, King.

part of being real Black for me, get yourself a Black Queen, King.

listen to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway x Be Real Black For Me below.

read this work by clicking on this highlighted section. we talk about the truth and educating ourselves before making moves. the truth will set you free… but first it will piss you off.

any time you see a highlighted word or phrase in any of my work, click it. it’ll take you to another insightful piece well worth the time. please spread, retweet, copy and paste, share this post. whatever you might already know, someone might not. what you might love, someone else might. whatever you don’t like or find useful, someone else might. we must start with education and my job is to do that. help me help us.

salute, Queen. peace, King.