The Destruction of Black America Part 2

This is basically a response to some of the questions to the first part of the series.

As Brotha Troy asked: what is the answer? I sincerely feel that a part to the solution will come when we take control of our image. It is important that we regain our platform to control the images of us that is presented to the world. As Brotha Troy mentioned we are losing these platforms at an alarming rate and since we do not control our image, it is easy for the white media to paint us in a negative light. If you will recall when BET was sold, the first casualty was Ed Gordon and BET news. Once the news segment was destroyed, nothing remained other than the entertainment portion where rappers and video vixens enticed the youth into believing into an urban fairy-tale that only existed in the mind of the people who controlled the entertainment industry.

Back in the days, black neighborhoods survived because they were centered around :the teachings" from what I call "The 'Hood Trinity" which was the home, the church, and the school. From the combined teachings of the trinity, info was passed down from offspring to offspring for the sole purpose of self-preservation. But a terrible thing happened, especially in the south: Urban Renewal!

Okay, let me go back a little further just to show you the "Set-up!" But first,let me address a remark from Cynique about individualism. Across the whole range of history, individualism has never contributed to a people's collective ability to survive. As such, it merely transforms the individual,not the community. Strangely enough, individualism has the tendency to re-enforce the "crabs-in-a-bucket mentality", and thanks to this rugged individualist approach, we became conditioned as a people to compete with one another for what resources were available to us. Accordingly, the material prosperity of the whole was thwarted. But this was also a part of the plan, the set-up.

Why do you think we never got our forty acres and a mules? The white man was no fool. He was a personal witness to what the black man could do. He had seen for himself how we had come to this country and had compelled the bitter earth that had never before borne crops to produce crops without limit. We had somehow transformed the south, a barren wildness, into a lush garden of Eden. Can you imagine the awe of the white man as he became a daily witness to what we could do as a collective, albeit as slaves. He watched us perform a sort of black magic, an agricultural sleight-of-hand that would have been an impossible feat for anyone except us. What we did in the south rivaled what the Egyptians had done with the pyramids. It there was ever such a thing as the ninth wonder of the world, it would have been the American south. What we accomplished there was a miracle and this fact was not lost on the white man. Therefore, he knew that,once we were free, that we could not be allowed to act as a single unit. He knew that what we had did for him as slaves would be nothing compared to what we would do for ourselves as free men. Thus the set-up. In addition to not giving us the land and mules, he had to devise a way to get us out of our element. We understood the land, knew most of nature's secrets so he had to get us into a alien environment where we would be at his mercy. Since we didn't know a damn thing about city living, this is where the white man wanted us!

What came next was the Great Migration. The urban change was disorienting since we had a tradition of living in close proximity with the soil. The congestion of the city was indeed a novel experience. The truth of the black exodus is that it was a forced march into the welcomed embrace of white capitalism. The south had benefited from us, Now, it was the north's turn. In the south we had been slaves. In the north, we were to be consumers, a new type of slave.

Here's what went down. The United States Committee For Economic Development After WWII developed a plan that stated "that in order to keep the cost of labor low, it is necessary to entice or force country people to move into the cities." The Committee decided this was the method by which there would always be a pool of people who would be nothing but consumers. The Committee also declared that since these people would be poor and landless, they would also be susceptible to hire for paltry wages. You think the white man didn't see us coming. Well, he didn't have to see us coming since he was the one who sent for us!

In the north, we took to the idea of consumerism like a fish takes to water. We accepted consumerism like it was a new gospel, and hedged in by our first contact with the almighty dollar, we practiced spending with an almost spiritual zeal. We still do. Money, and the belief that to spend was divine, fostered on us, our self-perpetuating identity as consumers.

Let's take a look at what happened to the brothas who remained in the south. Was there not a set-up for him? Of course, there was. Ever heard of the Pig Law?. It was the crack law back in 1876. Now sooner had the slaves been emancipated than the white man was set to work to contain him. The idea of a free--to-roam black man was unappealing to the white masses so it was only natural that a new physical world be established for him: Prison! Once the white south lost the power to hold black men hostage on the plantation, they now had to rely on another method. Right after Emancipation, the law made stealing a pig or any other farm animal an offense punishable by five years in prison. Just the week before , stealing a pig would have, at best, gotten the brotha a whipping by the slavemaster. Now, it was five years in the slammer!

With no place to go and no food to eat, the newly-freed black man's arrest rate began to rise. And it ain't stopped rising yet.

Then started the quest to portray the black man as the biggest threat to national security and as a consequence, the assault on our image began in earnest. And guess what one of the very first attacks was? That he black man was lazy and shiftless. How could the white man get away with that? The black man had just finished building the south from nothing and now all of a sudden, the same black man was lazy. What audacity. Anyway, this was the first negative image of the post-slavery black man. After this lie went over so well,other racial epithets followed. Add to these, the fact that the black man would steal the stink out of sh** and had a thing for white women, he became Public Enemy # ! overnight.

We must take control of our image. That is a starting point. That is why I am so adamant about our images in books and in song. They are no less of a detriment than the ones on the evening news. 

When Love Is Not Strong Enough

Throughout the history of mankind, love has withstood the test of time like no other concept known to humans. it has conquered where the sword has failed. It has come through as an agent of change like nothing else before it. Love has been an one-of-an-kind experience, a magnificent miracle, a pleasure that is so exquisite that there are no words in the language of men that can adequately define just what it is or how it is able to do what only it can do.... make us feel so decidedly alive.

But given all that love is, oftentimes even it is not strong enough to withstand the strain that being in prison places upon it. Nothing else in the world burdens love like prison because what else is there in existence that possesses the audacity to transform a beautiful butterfly into a braying mule? Prison is a heartache that scars even love.

How can love exist where there is no air for it to breathe? How can love survive when there is nothing on which it can nurture itself? Do you have any idea what happens when memories fade or when there is no future? Death is what happens. The death of love. And while there may be a 1001 things that may wound love, nothing kills it as quickly as prison.

I know. I speak from experience. I stood mute, helpless as time worked its evil spell, coming in between me and the woman I loved. She was a bigger victim than I was. She believed she was strong enough, but little did she know. How could she when she had been led to believe that there was no mountain high enough, no valley low enough..... She had no idea. But I did. Still, I was not prepared to meet the end of love. Who is.? And what is there that can prepare you for such a terrible end?

Even now, though I still bleed from countless unseen wounds, I applaud the merits of love, I commend its warmth and I highly recommend it, but I do offer this caution; YOU CAN STRESS LOVE BUT DON'T TEST LOVE 

The Pact

The question has come up about what i do other than write. To be honest, I have made an effort to get my message out in front of the masses. Have you ever heard or read about the pact between the three brothas who made a pact to become doctors. Well, this is a story about a dozen ex-bank-robbers who made a similar pact.

In the 70s we were responsible for all of the bank robberies in my hometown, dozens of them. When I first started robbing banks, I intended to use that money to buy "supplies" for the freedom fighters in Africa who were fighting to gain independence from colonial rulers. I also was doing my part to fund the black revolution that was brewing in this country. Needless to say, i soon became frustrated because the revolution was not happening fast enough. As a consequence, I then robbed banks for more personal reasons, my own livlihood.

My immediate crew as well as members of the other crews would share info on what banks were easier targets. It was like sharing "insider" tips. When we proved too much for the local FBI, a special task force from Washington, was assembled to bring us to justice. My crew went out in a blazing gun battle.

Once confined, we all made a pact to stick together and to this day, some 40 years later, the pact has never broken. Whichever ones of us were out, we would take care of the ones that were still confined. We will look out for any that had just gotten out of prison. We were constantly in and out of prison and were never on the streets at the same time until two years ago. It was then that we decided to start an organization to steer the youth away from a life of crime. We conducted seminars and held workshops, but the public never accepted us as legitimate. Some didn't think we were fit candidates to help the youth. All they saw was our past.

Besides me, a writer, the group contained a professional artist, a gospel singer. We were the lucky ones as we could still benefit from our talents. Others less fortunate had been robbed by time. There was a brotha who could have been an Olympic diver, another who could have been a professional boxer, another a professional basketball player. What they wanted to show was how a single decision could rob you of the opportunity to do something more rewarding with your life. The youth responded to our stories and we were invited to speak more often but the backlash was just too much. People just couldn't get over the fact that we had been criminals, but who knew better how to help the youth navigate their way through the urban maze than us. We knew where the landmines were. We knew the triggers. We understood the streets. They called our organization, Thugs, Inc.

Additionally, we had an inside view. When I was in prison, I knew about what new crime was about to be unleashed on the public. How? Because, most of these schemes were hatched in jail. Guys have nothing better to do than think of new crimes. I remember when car-jacking was merely a scheme on the blue-print. The same with home invasions. I was there while these crimes were being hashed out. It used to be when we would look at the news and see about one of the new, "designer" crimes, we would laugh and say, "Ah man, that so and so. He done put it down." Even though we were locked up, we knew exactly who was doing what. The prison was merely a laboratory where new schemes and crimes were drawn up.

Now, that I no longer participate in that lifestyle, I try to issue warnings. I hate crime. I use my books to make the public aware of what is about to come at them. The last time I was inside, I came face-to-face with a crime that I detested which was the selling of young sistas into the sex trade. What happened was this. Well, imagine Russian gangsters hooking up with local pimps. What you have is sex trafficking in the hood! It is already happening. Did you know that a lot of the missing children from Hurricane Katrina were kidnapped and sold into the sex trade? Probably not. In my hometown, a sista is on trial right now for selling her daughter to pimps. This is happening all over the country.

Thanks to rap videos and magazines that show half-naked sistas, what has happened is that men from all over Eastern Europe who come to this country on business and who have never experienced a black woman are now eager for the pleasure. As we all know, the butt of the black woman is the most fabled, world-renown physical asset on the planet.

I won't say any more, but you can read about it in my book, Russian Roulette. I will put it up on Kindle tomorrow for 99 cents. It tells the story. I also have a book, :Giving' the devil his due" which is about environmental racism, about how black housing projects were deliberately built on top of toxic waste dumps. A lot of unexplained illnesses of brothas and sistas today can be traced back to where they lived as children. My book, The Root of All Evil, confronts the facts that we are not actual citizens of the United States! Think about this, all citizens have the right to vote. If we were true citizens, why do they have to keep re-newing the Voting Rights Act for us? My book, Beggars' Banquet, is an expose about the human growth hormone now found in the foods we eat and about how food that is not fit to be sold in white grocery stores are shipped off to be sold in black neighborhoods. If I can't write about important issues that affect us, I don't write at all.

Finally, click on the link below. It is a news clip about my now extinct organization, The Giant Steps Foundation.


http://www.wcnc.com/...-102315609.html 

The Destruction of Black America

The Rape of Black America

And now a word of caution for African-Americans. This is real talk. No jivin’. Over the last decades, the black community has been raped by the government in the guise of the prison/industrial complex. Young men have been snatched from black communities across the nation and fed into a prison complex that has become one of the biggest businesses in the country. And it didn’t just start.

I know that many of you watch the news and witness the “prep walk” of countless black men as they are paraded across your television screen in handcuffs and subsequently into jail. The crime of the century is not the crime the brothas committed. The crime of the century is the crime the government committed to get to the point where there is almost a million black men locked up in America.

Don’t get it twisted by the illusion of what you see on the news. Sure, there were crimes committed, but let’s look at something that may help you understand why. In my upcoming book, “The Unmaking of The Black Man” I trace the roots of this conspiracy back to its genesis, but for our purposes, I want to focus on what happened in the 60’s. Shortly after the Watts (LA) riots, and the long, hot summer of 1965 when a new more violent image of black males began to emerge. This was truly the first time black men took to the streets in rage and it frightened white America.

Without delay, the powers that be in white America jumped to action and the move to eliminate black babies sped into high gear. It was at this moment that eugenicists ushered in the concept of IQ, which was devised solely as an ulterior motive to usher into the nation’s sterilization program. But the sterilization program was only a part of the plan. The other aspect of the campaign to make sure the black man never raised up in protest again so white America went for the jugular of black America---the children.

In 1963 The Mental Retardation Facilities and Communities Health Centers Act was passed. Funded by The National Institute of Mental Health and founded by a CIA operative, Dr. Robert Felix, this program placed black schoolchildren at risk! This opened the door for “Special Education” classes. Black kids populated these classes for a reason: the government wanted to give them drugs. This was the first time psychiatrists were allowed in American schools and they happily diagnosed black kids as “emotionally disturbed” or “learning impaired”. And then fed them psychotropic drugs like they were M&Ms. But this was merely stage one. What happened next is even more shocking than mis-diagnosing healthy, black kids.

What came next was the “Violence Initiative”, but more about that in another episode. Guess what happened to the unlucky children in the Special Ed classes who were tricked into taking unneeded, mind-altering drugs? These drugs were known to cause violent, irrational behavior so the government knew that within a decade or so, they could hunt down these same kids because they were violent and irrational!

A great number of these children, once grown, had earned a referral into a mental health facility. Statistics proved that those patients, committed crimes, at twice the rate of the general population. So what you have are “made” criminals, invented by the government. A report by The African-American Coalition for Justice in Social Policy indicated that NIMH’s work was a direct cause of the sky-rocketing violence in the ‘hood. Jim Brewer of the Coalition went on to explain that most of the violence in black communities over the last four decades has been the results of experiments in the form of drug therapy and psychological school programs. He went on to say that these programs have ravaged inner cities and manufactured criminals out of young people…”

But it didn’t stop there. In 1976, when I was in federal prison, I was labeled as homicidal and quite naturally referred to the psychologist’s office. As luck would have it, both the white psychologist and I shared the same last name, (this was before I changed my name) and we had this running joke about how we could be related as his family may have owned my family during slavery. This alleged “kinship” made him sympathetic and instead of introducing me to drugs, he put me down with yoga and meditation. One day, he called me to his office, gave me some classified document to read,andlocked me in his office so I could read the paper. It was a government paper about the “rising fear of the black man and what to do about it.” To be brief, what the paper stated was that the best thing for black males was prison. The paper said that by the year 2000 (remember this was 1976) that they intended to have a vast majority of black youth confined. There’s more. They wanted to destroy black America. They also declared that in an effort to weaken the bond between sistas and brothas that they would open the doors of corporate America to black women while keeping black men shut out of employment. They felt the economic disparity in black households would doom black love. They figured that more sistas would marry white men. Was the mission a success? Sistas are in corporate America like never before and brothas are in prison like never before.

Still not convinced. Ever heard of the “Kash 4 Kids” program. A few years ago, judges in Pennsylvania were busted for taking money from prison contractors in exchange for juveniles to fill the prisons that were being built. A lot of innocent juveniles got set up.

Now, that they had all these brothas locked up, the emphasis became on how to further benefit from them. The saga expanded. Prisons became the hottest commodity on the stock market as every corporation wanted to establish a presence inside a prison. Did you know that IBM, Revlon, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, as well as Victoria’s Secret have plants inside of prison? Now, with these billion dollar companies in on the act, the push to put even more people in prison sky-rocketed. It is these companies that control a lot of prison policy. Check this out. When I was In the federal pen In Atlanta, there had been a gang war. The warden placed the prison on lockdown for everyone’s safety. After a few days, one of the corporate sponsors called the warden and told him that he had a million dollar contract and that they wanted their products done. The next day, we were off lock-down! Damn, what the warden thought. Damn, everyone's safety. There was work to be done in the factory.

If this interests you, read my new novel, When I Say Jump, to find out more about the government’s effort to imprison black men. It is a fictionalized account (or is it) of how every major hospital in the country participates in a government-sponsored lottery where one out of every four black male babies called “puppets” are placed in this lotto where there are selected by government agents who use mental conditioning to get them ready for prison by the age of sixteen. The book by Gibran Tariq can be found on Amazon.com. http://bit.ly/whenisayjump 

Street Lit versus Traditional urban Lit

No matter what your reading pursuit or literary background, it will pretty much be agreed upon that one of literature’s first edict to writers was to entertain. This edict appears in all fictional literature and carries the almost explicit verdict of literary law, but no sooner than urban readers began that quest, they divided the realm of literary pursuits into two contrasting genres: Tradition urban lit and the more liberal street lit. Oddly enough, it was this fictional duality that set African-American readers upon their first literary turning point, and what evolved would forever alter the definition of what great reading was as well as how the experience was to be pursued. On the one hand, traditional urban lit sought to stimulate the senses of black readers by allowing characters to be the objects of their own individual growth and development, whereas street lit treated characters as the subject of an environment where educational growth and development was stunted. This was serious business indeed.

If, in our literary evolution, entertainment was the first serious connection between writer and reader, then great writing would be the unimpeachable evidence that we, as a collective of readers and writers, could produce a viable literary heritage . If it was the power to entertain that would ultimately keep us from degenerating to the level of an illiterate nation, then the power of great writing is what would separate us from being masters of our blossoming literary heritage or becoming slaves of it.
Both side of the coin, the traditionalists as well street lit artists have both sought to reform black readers via their senses. However both set forth the pretext that their way was not simply the right way, but the only way. What has ensued is the eternal question of black lit. What genre of writing satisfies our quest for reading entertainment best?

For me, I do not wholly believe that a reader’s fundamental literary outlook is changed because he/she gets entertained. What this does is basically to usher in the “sexual might makes right” syndrome which is part and parcel of a lot of traditional urban novels. In my mind, there remains some doubt, as to whether these “sexually proficient men and women” of traditional urban lit are heirs of anything entertaining other than the sexual “one-upmanship” that prevails in the work of the urban romance elite. No matter wherein one reads inside the realm of traditional urban lit, what you will find in the wake of such reading is a paint-by-number deadening of the soul where readers are literary voyeurs into the sexual antics of black America. Are male-bashing sistas any more entertaining than gun-toting thugs?

Street lit, on the other hand, is the extreme province of a cold-eyed pessimism where the tenets of dead, black men (i.e. Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines) are upheld in this “cult of personality” genre. I further contend that street lit, while propelled by innovative thought, is intellectually self-destructive.
Sadly, both genres have, at times, been an offensive policy against our inner nature. During the First Renaissance, the writings were designed for the sole purpose of self-preservation. The spirit of the work from that era was to educate, to foster cooperation rather than competition which is a basic need of an oppressed people. Street lit induces men to stare into the prism of the environment and then to draw up a blueprint to destroy the neighborhood. The work from the Harlem Renaissance forced readers to stare into the heavens and see that the stars spelled their names. The enduring novels of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes, Zora Neale Hurston served to strengthen the core communication between reader and writer.

In conclusion, I argue most vehemently that we deserve a literary heritage that is life-affirming, works with intellectual import which is much better than the predatory writings of street lit or the gratuitous sensuality of urban romance. What both genres have done to such an amazing extent is that they have acted as an advertisement for our flawed existence, boldly giving a platform for the literary justification and legitimacy of bad writing on the one hand and sexual pandering on the other. What a sad pretext on which to sustain a literary heritage. And while great writing that both entertains and educates may not wholly satisfy our “off-the-chain” appetite for pillage and plunder or sexual mischief, it will make grant us the literary concessions we will need as a transport to carry into the next era of our writings.

There is nothing illusory about the plight of black folk in America, and sure literature is an escape, However, we must baptize our writings with the literary blood of all the great authors of our past and deal realistically with what is going on in our communities. Books must be a mirror into our souls as a people. What we read must be as real as the colors of the rainbow, or the alternation of day and night. It is the only way to go if we are to avoid intellectual Armageddon.

One final word. No other writers in the history of literature have used their talents in such a derogatory fashion. Look where you choose on the literary horizon and what you will find is that writers from other races have brandished their pens as a literary weapon to uplift the spirit of their people. It was Voltaire, a French writer, who paved the way for the French Revolution with his writings. Even in this country, it was the pen of the writers who first impressed upon the masses that they deserved change.

Where do we go from here? 

The argument must be made: Street lit versus urban lit

THE ARGUMENT MUST BE MADE:

STREET LIT VERSUS TRADITIONAL URBAN LIT

                No matter what your reading pursuit or literary background, it will pretty much be agreed upon that one of literature’s first edict to writers was to entertain. This edict appears in all fictional literature and carries the almost explicit verdict of literary law, but no sooner than urban readers  began that quest, they divided the realm of literary pursuits into two contrasting genres: Tradition urban lit and the  more liberal street lit. Oddly enough, it was this fictional duality that set African-American readers upon their first literary turning point, and what evolved would forever alter the definition of what great reading was as well as how the experience was to be pursued. On the one hand, traditional urban lit sought to stimulate the senses of black readers by allowing characters to be the objects of their own individual  growth and development, whereas street lit treated characters as the subject of an environment where educational growth and development was stunted. This was serious business indeed.

If, in our literary evolution, entertainment was the first serious connection between writer and reader, then great writing would be the unimpeachable evidence that we, as a collective of readers and writers, could produce a viable literary heritage . If it was the power to entertain that would ultimately keep us from degenerating to the level of an illiterate nation, then the power of great writing is what would separate us from being masters of our blossoming literary heritage or becoming slaves of it.

Both side of the coin, the traditionalists as well street lit artists have both sought to reform black readers via their senses. However both set forth the pretext that their way was not simply the right way, but the only way. What has ensued is the eternal question of black lit. What genre of writing satisfies our quest for reading entertainment best?

For me, I do not wholly believe that a reader’s fundamental literary outlook is changed  because he/she gets entertained. What this does is basically to usher in the “sexual might makes right” syndrome which is part and parcel of a lot of  traditional urban novels. In my mind, there remains some doubt, as to whether these “sexually proficient men and women” of traditional urban lit are heirs of anything entertaining other than the sexual “one-upmanship” that prevails in the work of the urban romance elite. No matter wherein one reads inside the realm of traditional urban lit, what you will find in the wake of such reading  is a  paint-by-number deadening of the soul where readers are literary voyeurs into the sexual antics of black America. Are male-bashing sistas any more entertaining than gun-toting thugs?

Street lit, on the other hand, is the extreme province of a cold-eyed pessimism where the tenets of dead, black men (i.e. Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines) are upheld in this “cult of personality” genre.  I further contend that street lit, while propelled by innovative thought, is intellectually self-destructive.

Sadly, both genres have, at times, been an offensive policy against our inner nature. During the First Renaissance, the writings were designed for the sole purpose of self-preservation. The spirit of the work from that era was to educate, to foster cooperation rather than competition which is a basic need of an oppressed people. Street lit induces men to stare into the prism of the environment and then to draw up a blueprint to destroy the neighborhood. The work from the Harlem Renaissance forced readers to stare into the heavens and see that the stars spelled their names. The enduring novels of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes, Zora Neale Hurston served to strengthen the core communication between reader and writer.

In conclusion, I argue most vehemently that we deserve a literary heritage that is life-affirming, works with intellectual import which is much better than the predatory writings of street lit or the gratuitous sensuality of urban romance. What both genres have done to such an amazing extent is that they have acted as an advertisement for  our flawed existence, boldly giving a platform for the literary justification and legitimacy of bad writing on the one hand and sexual pandering on the other. What a sad pretext on which to sustain a literary heritage. And while great writing that both entertains and educates may not wholly satisfy our “off-the-chain” appetite for pillage and plunder or sexual mischief, it will make grant us the literary  concessions we will need as a transport to carry into the next era of our writings.

There is nothing illusory about the plight of black folk in America, and sure literature is an escape, However, we must baptize our writings with the literary blood of all the great authors of our past and deal realistically with what is going on in our communities. Books must be a mirror into our souls as a people. What we read must be  as real as the colors of the rainbow, or the alternation of day and night. It is the only way to go if we are to avoid intellectual Armageddon.

One final word. No other writers in the history of literature have used their talents in such a derogatory fashion. Look where you choose on the literary horizon and what you will find is that writers from other races have brandished their pens as a literary weapon to uplift the spirit of their people. It was Voltaire, a French writer, who paved the way for the French Revolution with his writings. Even in this country, it was the pen of the writers who first impressed upon the masses that they deserved change.

Where do we go from here?

The Fork and Spoon Chronicles Part 1

How about some good news! Every since the arrival of African-Americans in this country, the church has long been the bedrock of our survival, the foundation of our hopes, and the source of our inspiration. That much everyone knows to be true, but if you are like most people, you are well on your way to becoming a "spiritual millionaire" as you have (hopefully been racking up bonus points by practicing what you (or your ministers) preach, but after a lifetime of these earnings, you may not have ended up with anything in terms of physical rewards.

Basically, since hardly anyone teaches us how to nourish our temples, we practice haphazard, hit-or-miss, trial-and-error mis-education procedures that we have inherited from parents, school, and yes, church. Because we don't get blessed with any meaningful formal education about nutrition and health, our eating habits and food choices are more times than not derived from the culinary "School Of Hard Knocks. And the attendant results are not pretty because death is not a passing grade. To be honest, so many African-Americans who seemed so naturally good at "eating" have died as a direct consequence of our symptomatic "hand-to-mouth dietary ventures (or should I say misadventures.)

In the African-American community, eating has become one of our greatest disappointments. We invest tremendous energy in our financial strategies and we leave no stone unturned when in search of rules or advice to make our relationships work, but we lose very little sleep at night over how what we eat qualifies us for a host of life-threatening and debilitating diseases. Essentially, we are eroding our health.


Do you find it odd that you read the label of products and can parrot every ingredient contained in that particular food brand and then have no idea as to what that food item can do to your body? Why is this? It's because we are the foolish prisoners of our palettes. We listen to our tongues. We invest such culinary stock in what great pleasure we derive from our tongues that we pay scant heed to the potential damage that could be wreaked on our bodies. We are such suckers for our tongues that we suffer proudly when our tummies ache due to some gastronomical violation.

But wait a minute. There's something else you need to know. The fork and spoon are deadlier than the crack pipe! How hypocritical is it of us to rant and rail about the street corner drug-dealers and then don't do or say a mumbling word about the street corner grocery store that deals in death. How big is the difference of a death whether it is by an ingestion of cocaine or a digestion of unhealthy food? It's still a demise that's advoidable. If there is, at all, a difference, it lies in the fact that the dope fiend knows almost to a certainty what it is he is ingesting into his system whereas the food fiend has no clue. These days, cocaine and heroin have a lot less harmful preservatives and additives than the wares sold in the food store.

We will eagerly go out of our way or readily take the long way home simply to avoid taking our children past the corner where drugs are sold and then think nothing of walking into a corner store and buying that same child a sugar-loaded soft drink that is almost as big a detriment as a joint of marijuana.

Isn't it laughably ironic that safe-sex programs are spreading across the country and not safe-food programs? What does it say about African-Americans as a collective when we employ "procreation as recreation" and we eat to die. It says we enjoy flirting with death.