on the eve of a great man's death comes ...

i can't give you any quotes. not yet. it took me a while to learn what my mother and father and those before and around them already knew as Truth. Knowledge is Power.

I was told today that in Jena, Louisiana tomorrow, the Klu Klux Klan would be marching. I reacted with anger and disbelief - in the Unites States in 2008, a hate group is still allowed to exist, a group well known to stand against all that is American is allowed to live and thrive while others were denied their rights. Extinguished.

i was asked what would i do if i were in Jena. i answered roundabout - that teaching is my weapon. that Youtube may be more effective than marching. that the battle for
...
the battle for...
what?

we are a nation conflicted. during the civil rights and before, when freedom was in black and white, it was easy to identify a goal. civil rights. equal rights among all citizens. and de jure, we got that. but the de facto truth remains ambivalent to the laws codified in those times.

but its so hard to see this when we have become distracted by little black kids and little white kids can hold hands.

so what are our goals now? what are we striving for? what, as a people, do we still need to battle to win? war against a common enemy can blur the hatred between rivals to appear as patriotism as we fight for a common goal. but once the battle is won, and the fervor has receded, what is left but to bathe in our glory as the victors?

i write all of this to explain that to understand where we are going, where we NEED to go, its imperative to understand our past. America is often seen through the eyes of the neo-enlightened as a nightmare. with its ghoulish past of racism, sexism, patriarchy, manifest destiny, its hard to miss the other side of this - the false negative, i guess you could say. there were people who had morals. and throughout history, Right and Truth have never changed. while some fought for the end of slavery for free soil, others fought because american slavery is and has always been wrong. to enslave another man, to build his body and denigrate his mind in a land where we value Humanity, it has and will always be wrong.

throughout history, its easy to look back with a discerning eye and point out our flaws. but simply feeling bad for our past isn't enough... understanding all that gray area is what is necessary.

i think the goal now is to pause. to reflect. to realize that in the same breath we can be the best and worst country on this earth. to realize that we have set the standards high and failed. our unwillingness to move past the hurt, past the blame, and really see ourselves objectively has got us arguing over the superficial. maybe its not that the KKK can still exist, but that we self-sabotaged our own growth with the decimation of the Black Panthers because they represented something inconceivable - a physical manifestation of the American dream.

maybe, in our arrogance as a nation, we have shot ourselves in the foot. confidence and arrogance are two sides of the same coin. one permits learning while the other promotes resolution, limiting our access to growth through reflection.

MLK stood in front our biggest mirror in the nation and gave his speech on a dream. and we have failed because we have neglected to reflect. we have accused, argued, fought, waged war. we stupidly try to recover our bandages with new ones. we have learned and become depressed by our own actions. through the selfishness of depression we stopped at the surface and have not yet faced ourselves.

i think we as a nation are lost because we no longer have tangible goals. perhaps we hate rap so much because it offers the clearest perspective of our national conscious. we create beef to wage wars that we glorify, perhaps secretly proud of the carnage because we come out top dog. ...money power respect...maybe lil kim was right.

we ignore the Truth of the matter - how can we spread democracy, a government that believes in power to the people, when the president cannot walk through his own country without bodyguards?

there is something deeper here...something i can't get to... something that in all this rambling, i have had only glimpses of. its taken me a long time to get here... racism is really, truly, literally, the superficial battle. i say this in trepidation because those before me understanding this have been killed because we haven't been ready to face Truth. to break allegiance with the black community, my floating donut, to dive deeper into our past...

but my goal... my goal, is to become a democratic nation. power in the hands of all people. (knowledge in the hands of all people.) reviving the belief that with much power comes much responsibility.
(with much knowledge comes much responsibility.)

sometimes the best action is quiet and internal.