(Editor's note: This past week, I was on a retreat...ha! ain't that what rich folks do? rich folks and hippies? I'm neither. I swear. But anyway, the following is what i came up with. Let's call it a Medley, if you will. I hope you dig it. holler at me.
A-meezy)
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Nanny in the Dende
Every Friday I have lunch with my grandmother. I mean, she’s there. And I’m here. But we’re together. Every Friday at lunchtime.
See, here in Bahia, it’s a custom to serve traditional Bahian food every Frieday: moqueca de peixe, xinxim de frango, feijão fradinho…all of it, goodness, drenched in dendê, in palm oil.
And that’s where I find her.
That’s when I get to thinking about home. Not so much the place, but the concept. Check it. Every Friday I eat traditional Bahian food, developed by enslaved Africans who were remembering where they came from. In so doing, I’m reminded of where I come from.
Sunday afternoons in Brooklyn at Nanny’s house. Precious and Sena blasting Bobby Conners in the back of the apartment (did ya’ll know he’s white?). Monerock yelling for us to take our shirts off ‘cause palm oil stains. Crab. Shrimp. Rice. Cassava leaf. Fufu. Them banging party mints that were really like hard marshmallows. That fruit punch mixed with Pathmark-brand sherbert. The same fruit punch we couldn’t drink during building parties because they added some powerful water that made all the Africans and West Indians laugh and yell a lot. Nanny’s thick Liberian accent offering Cheese Doodles. Us cracking up because we heard “cheese doo-doos.”
And in the maintenance of this custom, Nanny not forgetting Liberia for one second.
Chinaka used to say something about food being a principle manifestation of culture. I was too hard headed too listen…or perhaps my pride rendered me deaf. But this is what she meant.
While I eat Bahian food on Friday, I am remembering 3 times over. You dig? Collective memory is individual memory and visa versa. By remembering my Brooklyn Sundays with Nanny while in Bahia, I the individual am remembering generations of Africans who are remembering home. You with me?
I was reading this joint where this dude was thanking the turtle for teaching us that we must carry our homes with us. I think about that. And I suppose that for African people, our shell, our home, is in our memory. Does this mean home is not to be lived, but only remembered, and as such essentially imagined? I don’t know. But Nanny brought Liberia with her to Brooklyn by remembering. Enslaved Africans brought Africa to Bahia by remembering. And every Friday, when I have lunch with Nanny, my grandmother, I too bring all of this with me.
So what does this all mean? What does a common understanding of home do for folks? And what if people who claim to have the “same” home conceive of it differently? I don’t know. These are just some things I been thinking about. Holler at me and let me know what you think.
-Amari
See, here in Bahia, it’s a custom to serve traditional Bahian food every Frieday: moqueca de peixe, xinxim de frango, feijão fradinho…all of it, goodness, drenched in dendê, in palm oil.
And that’s where I find her.
That’s when I get to thinking about home. Not so much the place, but the concept. Check it. Every Friday I eat traditional Bahian food, developed by enslaved Africans who were remembering where they came from. In so doing, I’m reminded of where I come from.
Sunday afternoons in Brooklyn at Nanny’s house. Precious and Sena blasting Bobby Conners in the back of the apartment (did ya’ll know he’s white?). Monerock yelling for us to take our shirts off ‘cause palm oil stains. Crab. Shrimp. Rice. Cassava leaf. Fufu. Them banging party mints that were really like hard marshmallows. That fruit punch mixed with Pathmark-brand sherbert. The same fruit punch we couldn’t drink during building parties because they added some powerful water that made all the Africans and West Indians laugh and yell a lot. Nanny’s thick Liberian accent offering Cheese Doodles. Us cracking up because we heard “cheese doo-doos.”
And in the maintenance of this custom, Nanny not forgetting Liberia for one second.
Chinaka used to say something about food being a principle manifestation of culture. I was too hard headed too listen…or perhaps my pride rendered me deaf. But this is what she meant.
While I eat Bahian food on Friday, I am remembering 3 times over. You dig? Collective memory is individual memory and visa versa. By remembering my Brooklyn Sundays with Nanny while in Bahia, I the individual am remembering generations of Africans who are remembering home. You with me?
I was reading this joint where this dude was thanking the turtle for teaching us that we must carry our homes with us. I think about that. And I suppose that for African people, our shell, our home, is in our memory. Does this mean home is not to be lived, but only remembered, and as such essentially imagined? I don’t know. But Nanny brought Liberia with her to Brooklyn by remembering. Enslaved Africans brought Africa to Bahia by remembering. And every Friday, when I have lunch with Nanny, my grandmother, I too bring all of this with me.
So what does this all mean? What does a common understanding of home do for folks? And what if people who claim to have the “same” home conceive of it differently? I don’t know. These are just some things I been thinking about. Holler at me and let me know what you think.
-Amari
Water, Plants, and Pops
Lately I’ve had this urge to water plants: to wet the leaves and watch the water drops cascade down to the soil below, to provide sustenance to roots. And with this urge, I remember my father. I remember that for as long as I can remember he would spend summer evenings watering the shrubs in our front yard. And even though we had one of them rotating sprinkler attachments that would do all the work for him, he chose to do it himself.
I understand.
Turner Leon. A quiet man whose silent pride shows in his work, in his laugh, in his home, his front lawn. I’ve never known him to complain. I’ve never known him to fail bending over backwards if there was something his family needed. Today, he works backbreaking shifts at the airport because I had to go to private school. Because I needed a car. Because I had to go to college. All of this after 30 some-odd years commuting day in and day out to Manhattan, then back home to Jersey, hungry, tired.
In the summer, this is when he would water the plants. Me, excitedly awaiting his arrival to chase lightning bugs in his presence, him watching and watering silently.
Today, watering plants in another hemisphere, providing sustenance to roots on the other side of the planet, I came to know my father in a new way.
So simple, a meditative act with a quenching sense of fulfillment in assisting another being flourish. Dig. It’s so much more than watering plants. It’s a series of behaviors, of attitudes. It’s no longer getting a job done any which way. It’s now putting yourself into the things you do, knowing what your heart is willing to give and choosing chores accordingly. It’s honesty. It’s sincerity. It’s integrity.
It’s being a man.
I ain’t seen my father in six months. But he has been with me, everyday stronger, teaching me, for we share much more than a couple of names. This is my father. My dad, pop-dukes, the primary model of the man I am becoming.
Nowadays, I’ve been wanting to build things: a dog house, a garden, a school, a family, a life. Build like my pops built. Be like my pops be.
Silent. Proud. A man.
So I’m starting by watering plants. The rest, I am sure, will come.
-Amari
I understand.
Turner Leon. A quiet man whose silent pride shows in his work, in his laugh, in his home, his front lawn. I’ve never known him to complain. I’ve never known him to fail bending over backwards if there was something his family needed. Today, he works backbreaking shifts at the airport because I had to go to private school. Because I needed a car. Because I had to go to college. All of this after 30 some-odd years commuting day in and day out to Manhattan, then back home to Jersey, hungry, tired.
In the summer, this is when he would water the plants. Me, excitedly awaiting his arrival to chase lightning bugs in his presence, him watching and watering silently.
Today, watering plants in another hemisphere, providing sustenance to roots on the other side of the planet, I came to know my father in a new way.
So simple, a meditative act with a quenching sense of fulfillment in assisting another being flourish. Dig. It’s so much more than watering plants. It’s a series of behaviors, of attitudes. It’s no longer getting a job done any which way. It’s now putting yourself into the things you do, knowing what your heart is willing to give and choosing chores accordingly. It’s honesty. It’s sincerity. It’s integrity.
It’s being a man.
I ain’t seen my father in six months. But he has been with me, everyday stronger, teaching me, for we share much more than a couple of names. This is my father. My dad, pop-dukes, the primary model of the man I am becoming.
Nowadays, I’ve been wanting to build things: a dog house, a garden, a school, a family, a life. Build like my pops built. Be like my pops be.
Silent. Proud. A man.
So I’m starting by watering plants. The rest, I am sure, will come.
-Amari
I was thinking...
I love the way my Lemba feels
on my chest
Cool,
glass beads of an impeccable white
Rising and Falling
Maintaining
the Balance of my breath
Pure and Sacred
My Lemba
Feels so right on my chest
-Amari
on my chest
Cool,
glass beads of an impeccable white
Rising and Falling
Maintaining
the Balance of my breath
Pure and Sacred
My Lemba
Feels so right on my chest
-Amari
Me and Goodbyes
My man Gabe once said he’d quit traveling because the goodbyes were too hard.
I feel him.
But perhaps it’s in keeping with the Universal order of things. For every hello, there is a goodbye. Balance. Or better yet, maybe goodbyes got to be earned. You know. Like the goodbye is so difficult because the time together was so fly. If the time was whack, we’d be able to bounce with no problem. Feel me?
I don’t know. No matter how many ways I try to justify it and make it sound sweet and poetic, goodbyes still remain a source of great suffering in my life.
For real. Goodbye. Leaving. The knowledge that you will be physically distant from another human being whose presence nourishes something in you. You say you’ll write. And you do. For the first few weeks emails are responded to right away. Then after that…you know how it is.
But there’s something in me that suggests that people aren’t forever, that relationships run their course and that goodbye leads to healthy closure, that this relationship has served its function in your life and you must be mature enough to both acknowledge and accept this. Ok. Sounds good. But there is something about this that leaves me feeling so ungrateful. Like the check comes and I leave a measly “thank you” as I brake for the door, leaving the others to cover me.
Somebody has to be with me on this. I know Gabe is. I hate goodbyes. I hate ‘em. Sometimes I’d just rather bounce. Not have to face the rupture that goodbyes bring. I get comfortable and used to a sequence of things that goodbyes forever disrupt, send into the unreachable realm of the past. Not like I’m scared of change. But I’m sayin…
I, personally, have an issue with letting go of the past. This I know. So I suppose I need to realize that things change, that they can’t remain the same forever. The goodness that I’ve lived here in Brazil, the experiences that I’ve shared with others have passed. They are forever gone…or better yet, they have integrated themselves into the fabric of me. I am what I’ve lived. But these experiences can never again be lived as they were. All of this I must accept. And I give thanks for having been afforded the opportunity to know these people, to live these moments.
Yeah, all of this I know. But I still hate goodbyes.
-Amari
I feel him.
But perhaps it’s in keeping with the Universal order of things. For every hello, there is a goodbye. Balance. Or better yet, maybe goodbyes got to be earned. You know. Like the goodbye is so difficult because the time together was so fly. If the time was whack, we’d be able to bounce with no problem. Feel me?
I don’t know. No matter how many ways I try to justify it and make it sound sweet and poetic, goodbyes still remain a source of great suffering in my life.
For real. Goodbye. Leaving. The knowledge that you will be physically distant from another human being whose presence nourishes something in you. You say you’ll write. And you do. For the first few weeks emails are responded to right away. Then after that…you know how it is.
But there’s something in me that suggests that people aren’t forever, that relationships run their course and that goodbye leads to healthy closure, that this relationship has served its function in your life and you must be mature enough to both acknowledge and accept this. Ok. Sounds good. But there is something about this that leaves me feeling so ungrateful. Like the check comes and I leave a measly “thank you” as I brake for the door, leaving the others to cover me.
Somebody has to be with me on this. I know Gabe is. I hate goodbyes. I hate ‘em. Sometimes I’d just rather bounce. Not have to face the rupture that goodbyes bring. I get comfortable and used to a sequence of things that goodbyes forever disrupt, send into the unreachable realm of the past. Not like I’m scared of change. But I’m sayin…
I, personally, have an issue with letting go of the past. This I know. So I suppose I need to realize that things change, that they can’t remain the same forever. The goodness that I’ve lived here in Brazil, the experiences that I’ve shared with others have passed. They are forever gone…or better yet, they have integrated themselves into the fabric of me. I am what I’ve lived. But these experiences can never again be lived as they were. All of this I must accept. And I give thanks for having been afforded the opportunity to know these people, to live these moments.
Yeah, all of this I know. But I still hate goodbyes.
-Amari
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A Fleeting Thought on Our Talk
I was passing by a group of people talking the other day and I got to thinking.
I remember Chinaka would say she’d fail to catch what folks were saying to her because she would often willingly lose herself in the rhythm of their speech. I could dig that. Sometimes I swear I hear a drum keeping beat as they speak. As we speak.
There’s something so familiar about it.
They say that Brazilian Portuguese is the most unlike the Portuguese spoken anywhere else in the world and that the Portuguese of Bahia is the most unlike the Portuguese spoken in the rest of Brazil. I suppose it makes sense considering that a majority of the enslaved Africans forcefully brought to the Americas came to Brazil with the greatest portion coming to Bahia.
On any given day I hear Yoruba. Jamaican Patois. Fante. Harlem street corner slang. My Grandmother’s US Southern drawl. At some golden moments I hear ideas communicated in a foreign language as clearly as I do in my native tongue, also a foreign language. There are other times where I’m on the receiving end of someone sharing shared experiences of a shared past.
I catch it. I feel it. And I respond. Produced by a beating heart pumping ancient blood, syllables slide off my tongue and fly through the air with the wings of centuries.
So much of who we are is in our tongues. Tongues connected to souls that don’t forget, that know no time, no space. That we don’t speak these languages all grammatically good ain’t as important as our capacity to speak them right, to share experience, to pass on wisdom with less words and more feeling.
We know we are too big to fit into words.
Believe that.
-Amari
I remember Chinaka would say she’d fail to catch what folks were saying to her because she would often willingly lose herself in the rhythm of their speech. I could dig that. Sometimes I swear I hear a drum keeping beat as they speak. As we speak.
There’s something so familiar about it.
They say that Brazilian Portuguese is the most unlike the Portuguese spoken anywhere else in the world and that the Portuguese of Bahia is the most unlike the Portuguese spoken in the rest of Brazil. I suppose it makes sense considering that a majority of the enslaved Africans forcefully brought to the Americas came to Brazil with the greatest portion coming to Bahia.
On any given day I hear Yoruba. Jamaican Patois. Fante. Harlem street corner slang. My Grandmother’s US Southern drawl. At some golden moments I hear ideas communicated in a foreign language as clearly as I do in my native tongue, also a foreign language. There are other times where I’m on the receiving end of someone sharing shared experiences of a shared past.
I catch it. I feel it. And I respond. Produced by a beating heart pumping ancient blood, syllables slide off my tongue and fly through the air with the wings of centuries.
So much of who we are is in our tongues. Tongues connected to souls that don’t forget, that know no time, no space. That we don’t speak these languages all grammatically good ain’t as important as our capacity to speak them right, to share experience, to pass on wisdom with less words and more feeling.
We know we are too big to fit into words.
Believe that.
-Amari
Monday, July 16, 2007
Campo Grande
It was on the Legon campus in Accra a little over three and a half years ago that I realized how beautiful trees really are. And I am not merely referring to their aesthetic presence, but also their ontological being (if that’s even how you use “ontological”). You feel me?
So very simple, so beautiful in that subtle sort of way that it took me 20 years, two decades, to recognize what has since become a source of great joy in my life.
Seriously. Think about what they teach us. Go slow. Stand firm. Whatever you become, stay grounded. Be humble and grow at your own pace. Reach for the sky, while always protecting the source of your strength.
Philosophy!
The other Sunday I was reminded of this Wisdom when me and Kana sat in Campo Grande laughing talking sharing whatever. And it was nice just being there, breathing in the shade of the trees.
Comfortable. Present. Silent. Alive.
It’s the simple things that make this life beautiful.
I’m feeling good, feeling great.
How are you?
-Amari
So very simple, so beautiful in that subtle sort of way that it took me 20 years, two decades, to recognize what has since become a source of great joy in my life.
Seriously. Think about what they teach us. Go slow. Stand firm. Whatever you become, stay grounded. Be humble and grow at your own pace. Reach for the sky, while always protecting the source of your strength.
Philosophy!
The other Sunday I was reminded of this Wisdom when me and Kana sat in Campo Grande laughing talking sharing whatever. And it was nice just being there, breathing in the shade of the trees.
Comfortable. Present. Silent. Alive.
It’s the simple things that make this life beautiful.
I’m feeling good, feeling great.
How are you?
-Amari
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Where I Get It
The other day, I woke up with these words in my head:
“So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
I don’t know when I’ll be back again…”
These were the words to which I awoke. Familiar words from my childhood. Felt words of my present. This, the song she sang to Jeff and me when were kids. Me too young to know she was singing me my fate.
I recently heard that to be a mother is to suffer in paradise. And it might could be. Back in the States for four brief weeks, we stood in the corridor of Newark Airport. Joking. Laughing. Then the time came and just as suddenly did her burst of tears.
“Why you always leaving me?”
But I gotta go.
What incredible foresight, what magnificent understanding; the responsible execution of her purpose. The thing that makes her most proud of her youngest son is the source of her deepest pain. That we will be physically distant is a mere byproduct of the work she herself has prepared me to do.
We are not a stagnant people.
Monerock,
I heard an Ancient call from somewhere in the Universe, a call you have been training my ears to perceive since the womb, and I am responding. You see? You have already fulfilled what you were to have fulfilled through me. Whether I am here or there, you are with me always, an umbilical chord away. So as I walk, know that I am armed with your lessons and protected by your love. Can’t nobody hold me.
And the distance is difficult. But what sweeter knowledge than that of Purpose being realized? It is a knowledge that softens the hardness of any longing.
Momma, I know you gonna worry. But this is who we are. After all, is your history not marked by movement for the greater good? You and Nanny who left your country for another, to settle in a place of folks who did the same. Aunty Florence sequestered, then rescued by the merchant marine who raised you. And Monah, on the move till the day she left this earth. This is me because this is us.
I get it from my momma. I get it from you.
That’s how I know I’ma be all right.
-Amari
“So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go.
‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
I don’t know when I’ll be back again…”
These were the words to which I awoke. Familiar words from my childhood. Felt words of my present. This, the song she sang to Jeff and me when were kids. Me too young to know she was singing me my fate.
I recently heard that to be a mother is to suffer in paradise. And it might could be. Back in the States for four brief weeks, we stood in the corridor of Newark Airport. Joking. Laughing. Then the time came and just as suddenly did her burst of tears.
“Why you always leaving me?”
But I gotta go.
What incredible foresight, what magnificent understanding; the responsible execution of her purpose. The thing that makes her most proud of her youngest son is the source of her deepest pain. That we will be physically distant is a mere byproduct of the work she herself has prepared me to do.
We are not a stagnant people.
Monerock,
I heard an Ancient call from somewhere in the Universe, a call you have been training my ears to perceive since the womb, and I am responding. You see? You have already fulfilled what you were to have fulfilled through me. Whether I am here or there, you are with me always, an umbilical chord away. So as I walk, know that I am armed with your lessons and protected by your love. Can’t nobody hold me.
And the distance is difficult. But what sweeter knowledge than that of Purpose being realized? It is a knowledge that softens the hardness of any longing.
Momma, I know you gonna worry. But this is who we are. After all, is your history not marked by movement for the greater good? You and Nanny who left your country for another, to settle in a place of folks who did the same. Aunty Florence sequestered, then rescued by the merchant marine who raised you. And Monah, on the move till the day she left this earth. This is me because this is us.
I get it from my momma. I get it from you.
That’s how I know I’ma be all right.
-Amari
Monday, July 9, 2007
Here Ain't There, but oh How It Is
I used to listen, cordially, as people, self- and professionally-identified intellectuals, would explain how one cannot apply North American racial hierarchies to Brazilian society, that Brazilian society has its own particular issues and that it is sheer North American arrogance to attempt to apply lessons learned from the Black struggle in the US to Brazil. This came from the mouths of folks from either side of the equator, all them white. Like I said, at first I would listen and accept, for after all, these people have studied the issue and knew more than I could.
Today, I no longer listen.
In these the days of post-modernism (which no one seems to be able to explain, but everyone wants to talk about), talk of globalization as if it were developed yesterday, and a heightened interest in the racial compositions of Latin America, the intellectual incompetence of the Academy is becoming more and more clear.
No longer able to outright deny the genocidal racism in place in Brazil (since the days of the dictator…no, the crown…no, in place since the days of slavery) and subtly acknowledging that racial hierarchies do indeed exist, these intellectuals attempt to ascribe an innovative racial paradigm based on the (long outdated) idea of the racial democracy, that mythical paradise in which there are racial differences that by no means inhibit equal participation in society for all citizens.
They say that Brazil is not the United States. That here everyone is mixed. That the root of social inequality is class. That race doesn’t exist as anything more than a means of distinguishing folks. For instance: “that little Black boy,” “that white gentleman,” “the Black maid,” “the white young lady.” Yeah, you know, distinguish the people.
And what about the common saying known by every good Brazilian citizen, teaching young men how to navigate their social relationships with women in case they ever forget?:
“White woman to marry,
Mulata to fuck,
Black woman to work.”
In the States we would call that racism, and its social manifestation racial oppression. But Brazil ain’t the States. Here, race doesn’t exist.
Just silly. I mean really. It is.
White hegemony is a global phenomenon. As such it manifests itself...how?…globally! This means, naturally, that wherever we may find the destructive presence of white hegemony in the world, it will appear in such forms as racism, capitalism, imperialism and so forth.
And how do the Black people of Brazil feel about this idea of the raceless society? You know, those human beings socially, politically and economically marginalized (understating it); the ones who until today are denied jobs for failure to possess a “good appearance;” that majority of the Brazilian population who are rare to occupy public positions that don’t involve kicking a ball or singing a song. What do they think about racial democracy? These white intellectuals, niggerologists they’re called, can’t tell you because they never ask. After all, if race doesn’t exist, there is no need.
But I’ve lived here for some time. While I may not be from here, while I may not have been raised here and always have the choice to leave, I know what I’ve experienced. Me, a tall, slim man with locks who, for as raceless as this society may want to believe it is, no one fails to acknowledge as Black. I have lived here.
And the situations in which I’ve found myself ring stunningly familiar; the conversations I’ve held echo themes that know only one language: the hatred of white hegemony. This fascination with globalization is nothing new. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was the product of globalization. It was a means to facilitate the greedy expansion of destruction’s white hatred. We have not yet overthrown this system; we have not yet executed destruction’s destruction, neither in the United States nor in Brazil.
Of course we can apply North American racial hierarchies to Brazilian society. While acknowledging “cultural peculiarities,” we are talking about white hegemony, the common root. And as such, its defenders, the Academy’s intellectuals, tell us that we have no connection, that our experiences are too different to reconcile, that we are not one people.
We know better than that. Thank God, we know better than that.
-Amari
Today, I no longer listen.
In these the days of post-modernism (which no one seems to be able to explain, but everyone wants to talk about), talk of globalization as if it were developed yesterday, and a heightened interest in the racial compositions of Latin America, the intellectual incompetence of the Academy is becoming more and more clear.
No longer able to outright deny the genocidal racism in place in Brazil (since the days of the dictator…no, the crown…no, in place since the days of slavery) and subtly acknowledging that racial hierarchies do indeed exist, these intellectuals attempt to ascribe an innovative racial paradigm based on the (long outdated) idea of the racial democracy, that mythical paradise in which there are racial differences that by no means inhibit equal participation in society for all citizens.
They say that Brazil is not the United States. That here everyone is mixed. That the root of social inequality is class. That race doesn’t exist as anything more than a means of distinguishing folks. For instance: “that little Black boy,” “that white gentleman,” “the Black maid,” “the white young lady.” Yeah, you know, distinguish the people.
And what about the common saying known by every good Brazilian citizen, teaching young men how to navigate their social relationships with women in case they ever forget?:
“White woman to marry,
Mulata to fuck,
Black woman to work.”
In the States we would call that racism, and its social manifestation racial oppression. But Brazil ain’t the States. Here, race doesn’t exist.
Just silly. I mean really. It is.
White hegemony is a global phenomenon. As such it manifests itself...how?…globally! This means, naturally, that wherever we may find the destructive presence of white hegemony in the world, it will appear in such forms as racism, capitalism, imperialism and so forth.
And how do the Black people of Brazil feel about this idea of the raceless society? You know, those human beings socially, politically and economically marginalized (understating it); the ones who until today are denied jobs for failure to possess a “good appearance;” that majority of the Brazilian population who are rare to occupy public positions that don’t involve kicking a ball or singing a song. What do they think about racial democracy? These white intellectuals, niggerologists they’re called, can’t tell you because they never ask. After all, if race doesn’t exist, there is no need.
But I’ve lived here for some time. While I may not be from here, while I may not have been raised here and always have the choice to leave, I know what I’ve experienced. Me, a tall, slim man with locks who, for as raceless as this society may want to believe it is, no one fails to acknowledge as Black. I have lived here.
And the situations in which I’ve found myself ring stunningly familiar; the conversations I’ve held echo themes that know only one language: the hatred of white hegemony. This fascination with globalization is nothing new. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was the product of globalization. It was a means to facilitate the greedy expansion of destruction’s white hatred. We have not yet overthrown this system; we have not yet executed destruction’s destruction, neither in the United States nor in Brazil.
Of course we can apply North American racial hierarchies to Brazilian society. While acknowledging “cultural peculiarities,” we are talking about white hegemony, the common root. And as such, its defenders, the Academy’s intellectuals, tell us that we have no connection, that our experiences are too different to reconcile, that we are not one people.
We know better than that. Thank God, we know better than that.
-Amari
Saturday, July 7, 2007
A Memory
Today, a friend of mine asked if I’d ever been to the top of the Statue of Liberty and we got to talking about Ellis Island.
A memory:
4th grade trip
and Ms. Eckleman’s class searching
for familiar family names etched in marble,
stone
Then me.
The lone Black man-child
Looking in vain.
My people never known no Ellis Island
-Amari
A memory:
4th grade trip
and Ms. Eckleman’s class searching
for familiar family names etched in marble,
stone
Then me.
The lone Black man-child
Looking in vain.
My people never known no Ellis Island
-Amari
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
I Quit Talkin About Revolution
(editor’s note: I been tryna write this one for a while. I started on the third and finished it just now. No such thing as coincidence. All in due time, I suppose. Special shout out to Marlo. Thanks for helping me get my ideas together on this one. Sorry if I’m repeating myself.)
I quit talking about Revolution. I quit. For real. I’m serious. I gave it up. Stopped talking about it.
Not on some “niggas ain’t ready for revolution” or whack cliché-ness like “revolution puts you back to where you started,” or the even whacker “I believe in evolution,” nah. I quit talking about revolution because I honestly do not feel that a revolution, popularly conceived as a radical transformation of a politico-socio-economic system, will do much for Black people. While these systems effect the conditions of people’s lives, they do not affect them.
The popular conception of revolution is one of a Marxist persuasion. Cedric Robinson been done showed us how Marx wasn’t checkin for no Black people; how although a “radical tradition,” it was a radical tradition within a larger European tradition (think white hegemony/imperialism). As such, it was a product of its producers: Eurocentric, that is, racist. (Read the book Black Marxism)
But beyond that, my largest difficulty with this idea of revolution is its reduction of human beings to scientistic beings, calculable subjects, quantifiable units. This to me is a problem, as it fails to account for the humanity of humans: strengths, weaknesses, difficulties, passions, imaginations. In other words, it has an extremely limited conception of human existence.
I used to ask what good is freedom in the hands of a sick people? To which my mentor would respond that, sick or not, freedom should never be out of the hands of any people. And I can dig that. But my interests lie with the well-being of Black people, something that egalitarian political structures do not inherently guarantee.
For real. In Black radical discourse, revolution is viewed as the means through which to win freedom, that magical ideal that will solve all of our problems. But I ask, if the revolution came and we were to “win” our freedom tomorrow, how would things be different? How would such prevalent issues that are not overtly linked to political structures (domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness…) be dealt with? After all, these issues do not fall within the realm of politico-socio-economic structures alone. And why do we continually convince ourselves we must wait upon some illusionary freedom to begin the work we could have begun yesterday?
How will revolution improve our lives? How will it make us better people?
It just seems to me that, when it comes down to the come down, we seem to envision “revolution” as a miraculous tool that will do for us the work we are either too lazy or too scared to do for ourselves.
I love my people. This is not to be debated. But I also ain’t gonna keep making excuses for us when we ain’t doing what we should. Too often we place our capacities to affect change, to live our lives, outside of ourselves, forfeiting this the most precious of gifts to others. You feel me?
We have not yet realized, or accepted, that we are already Free, that we already have what we need to construct what we want. And all of this rests within ourselves. We don’t need no revolution for this.
We are the creators of the blue note, those whom the Western major scale cannot contain. I think that revolution is too limited a concept for what we need, what we deserve, and of what we are capable.
It is for this, that I have quit talking about revolution.
Now I just talk about life.
Does this make me counter-revolutionary?
Holler at me.
-Amari
In honor of the 4th of July, we turn to Freddy D.:
http://www.globalblacknews.com/FDouglas.html
I quit talking about Revolution. I quit. For real. I’m serious. I gave it up. Stopped talking about it.
Not on some “niggas ain’t ready for revolution” or whack cliché-ness like “revolution puts you back to where you started,” or the even whacker “I believe in evolution,” nah. I quit talking about revolution because I honestly do not feel that a revolution, popularly conceived as a radical transformation of a politico-socio-economic system, will do much for Black people. While these systems effect the conditions of people’s lives, they do not affect them.
The popular conception of revolution is one of a Marxist persuasion. Cedric Robinson been done showed us how Marx wasn’t checkin for no Black people; how although a “radical tradition,” it was a radical tradition within a larger European tradition (think white hegemony/imperialism). As such, it was a product of its producers: Eurocentric, that is, racist. (Read the book Black Marxism)
But beyond that, my largest difficulty with this idea of revolution is its reduction of human beings to scientistic beings, calculable subjects, quantifiable units. This to me is a problem, as it fails to account for the humanity of humans: strengths, weaknesses, difficulties, passions, imaginations. In other words, it has an extremely limited conception of human existence.
I used to ask what good is freedom in the hands of a sick people? To which my mentor would respond that, sick or not, freedom should never be out of the hands of any people. And I can dig that. But my interests lie with the well-being of Black people, something that egalitarian political structures do not inherently guarantee.
For real. In Black radical discourse, revolution is viewed as the means through which to win freedom, that magical ideal that will solve all of our problems. But I ask, if the revolution came and we were to “win” our freedom tomorrow, how would things be different? How would such prevalent issues that are not overtly linked to political structures (domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness…) be dealt with? After all, these issues do not fall within the realm of politico-socio-economic structures alone. And why do we continually convince ourselves we must wait upon some illusionary freedom to begin the work we could have begun yesterday?
How will revolution improve our lives? How will it make us better people?
It just seems to me that, when it comes down to the come down, we seem to envision “revolution” as a miraculous tool that will do for us the work we are either too lazy or too scared to do for ourselves.
I love my people. This is not to be debated. But I also ain’t gonna keep making excuses for us when we ain’t doing what we should. Too often we place our capacities to affect change, to live our lives, outside of ourselves, forfeiting this the most precious of gifts to others. You feel me?
We have not yet realized, or accepted, that we are already Free, that we already have what we need to construct what we want. And all of this rests within ourselves. We don’t need no revolution for this.
We are the creators of the blue note, those whom the Western major scale cannot contain. I think that revolution is too limited a concept for what we need, what we deserve, and of what we are capable.
It is for this, that I have quit talking about revolution.
Now I just talk about life.
Does this make me counter-revolutionary?
Holler at me.
-Amari
In honor of the 4th of July, we turn to Freddy D.:
http://www.globalblacknews.com/FDouglas.html
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
For my Mati
My man Sendolo reminded me of something I once read. It’s a term, a concept that the Saramaka Maroons of Suriname and French Guiana use to determine a particular type of kinship: Máti. Deeper than even blood, Mati refers to the bond between people who survived the Middle Passage together.
I like that.
At some point last week, Nangila celebrated 7 years. 7 years since that unforgettable summer at the W.E.B. DuBois Scholars Institute. 5 kids (a sixth yet to come), inheritors of an ancient wisdom, came together only half-consciously to birth what would become more than a group of friends, but a family of young warriors, healers, priests, teachers, artists.
In the middle of a transitionary period in our life-paths, we chose a name: Nangila
“born on a journey”
And who were we to doubt the power of a name? Had we not listened to the lessons of our forbearers? Were we not merely doing what we were called to do?
7 years of blessings. 7 years of fulfilling the name we chose to give ourselves.
This one is for my Nangila fam.
Jason, Adjoa, Fahtema, Vanessa, Tracee.
My Máti. Spread throughout the world, our connected consciousness unifies the steps of this common path.
Oh, ever-sweetening journey! Bless our arriving generation as you have blessed us.
We are loved.
Oh, how we are loved.
-Amari
I like that.
At some point last week, Nangila celebrated 7 years. 7 years since that unforgettable summer at the W.E.B. DuBois Scholars Institute. 5 kids (a sixth yet to come), inheritors of an ancient wisdom, came together only half-consciously to birth what would become more than a group of friends, but a family of young warriors, healers, priests, teachers, artists.
In the middle of a transitionary period in our life-paths, we chose a name: Nangila
“born on a journey”
And who were we to doubt the power of a name? Had we not listened to the lessons of our forbearers? Were we not merely doing what we were called to do?
7 years of blessings. 7 years of fulfilling the name we chose to give ourselves.
This one is for my Nangila fam.
Jason, Adjoa, Fahtema, Vanessa, Tracee.
My Máti. Spread throughout the world, our connected consciousness unifies the steps of this common path.
Oh, ever-sweetening journey! Bless our arriving generation as you have blessed us.
We are loved.
Oh, how we are loved.
-Amari
Sunday, July 1, 2007
An Invitation
Destinations, I’m learning, ain’t necessarily the best part of the journey. There is so much to be gained on the way, the path so potentially wealthy.
This might could be why I love to walk. Wherever. Anytime. My aunt Precious’ house. Church Ave. from Utica to Flatbush with my grandmother. Washington Heights to Brooklyn. Along the Layou River, Dois de Julho to Campo Grande, Havana Vieja, or King’s Way Market. It just feels natural. Good-like. You know?
So it is in keeping with this that I ask you to walk with me.
5 months ago, I arrived in Brazil with the intentions of maintaining a weekly blog for the 6-month duration of my stay in the country. All right, now I admit that in practice intentions are worth very little. But things happen. And this is the first entry. It comes on the first day of my last month here. Ya’ll still willing to get down?
Really, the reason I’m soliciting your company is more personal than anything else: my protracted struggle to negotiate that transparent line between being alone and being lonely…(or maybe it’s just my attempt to escape it altogether? Me and my self-deception again!). But it is also my acknowledgement that in order to discover our generation’s mission from the relative obscurity Fanon told us about, we must contend with and make sense of the theme and role of migration/movement that drenches our history and present. Where you headed to? Where you coming from? And what you learn on the way?
Then perhaps more than anything else, this is an invitation. True goodness is never individual. The places I go. The people I meet. The conversations I have. The inspiration I receive. None of it belongs to me alone. They’re ours.
So, if you will, walk with me. Let me share. We got work to do.
-Amari
This might could be why I love to walk. Wherever. Anytime. My aunt Precious’ house. Church Ave. from Utica to Flatbush with my grandmother. Washington Heights to Brooklyn. Along the Layou River, Dois de Julho to Campo Grande, Havana Vieja, or King’s Way Market. It just feels natural. Good-like. You know?
So it is in keeping with this that I ask you to walk with me.
5 months ago, I arrived in Brazil with the intentions of maintaining a weekly blog for the 6-month duration of my stay in the country. All right, now I admit that in practice intentions are worth very little. But things happen. And this is the first entry. It comes on the first day of my last month here. Ya’ll still willing to get down?
Really, the reason I’m soliciting your company is more personal than anything else: my protracted struggle to negotiate that transparent line between being alone and being lonely…(or maybe it’s just my attempt to escape it altogether? Me and my self-deception again!). But it is also my acknowledgement that in order to discover our generation’s mission from the relative obscurity Fanon told us about, we must contend with and make sense of the theme and role of migration/movement that drenches our history and present. Where you headed to? Where you coming from? And what you learn on the way?
Then perhaps more than anything else, this is an invitation. True goodness is never individual. The places I go. The people I meet. The conversations I have. The inspiration I receive. None of it belongs to me alone. They’re ours.
So, if you will, walk with me. Let me share. We got work to do.
-Amari
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