Is It Racism or Economics?

  Interesting program on KQED the other night about white privilege.  The commentator was white and he was addressing a white audience.

“We love to talk racism because it makes us look like better people.  But many people of color don’t care what we think of them — they care about our money.  We can talk about racism all day and it won’t change things because it’s the distribution of wealth that is at the heart of discrimination, inequity, and the dehumanization of other human beings.”

That little “our money” part was a bit irritating because another white guy, Karl Marx pointed out that wealth is built on the backs of the working class. Now I’m no communist… but I know we ain’t been getting no where near a fair deal on the compensation for out labor.  Other than that, it was a powerful statement. (See: website) The decision to migrate back to the land is threefold:

1. Urban America and its values are killing us as a people
2. “Main Steam” will never be a fair playing field. We need to “come ye apart” and create groups rooms for healing, Black Think Tanks, land based wealth, and envirnments suitable to weather any future economic storm.
3. We need to calm down to the point where we’re creating our own communities, (again), our own new myths instead of buying into “myths” that the Korporate Kulture keeps giving us (e.g. “Thug Kulture”, membership in the new “Permanent Criminal Class“, and the idea that we just can’t do no betta.)

I’m not downing Christianity in any way, but the idea of throwing up our arms and just saying … “Oh dis heah is da last days and der jus ain’t nothin we can do about it cus Jesus is comin” is bunk.  Republicans and Owning Class America is playing us (and most others) left, right, and center while they fill their pockets with our tax dollars.

The time is ripe to move to the country, buy some of that very inexpensive land (preferably with fresh water on it), raise some chickens, grow vegetables that you’ll know are fresh and healthy, do more than just survive–flourish!

50 Ways To Go Green

In planning my exodus from Urban America, it has become increasingly clear that Going Green and learning effective permaculture planning cannot be ignored.

 MSN.com has a story on 50 Ways To Go Green. Hope it gives you some ideas.

Wanna See What You’re Missing?

Wanna See What You’re Missing?

Some black people will look glance at this blog and agree with its premise immediately. Others will need more convincing. So take a quick look at your room, studio apartment, or home in the hood, and then look at what you can have for shockingly cheap when you move out of the chaos and into nature.
United Country.com Just type in a state you’re curious about or perhaps the home state of “your peoples”… and be prepared for shock and awe….

Ranch & Country.com Don’t stop there. The web is full of possibilities. On the day I pulled up this page, they were featuring a “rustic cabin” in Colorado for $148,900.
The links above are simply the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a scenic little country home … national forest on 3 sides, a spring-fed pond, sheds and a barn on 36 acres for only $149,000!

So Much Land To Be Free In

During the Great Depression, many people fled the drought-stricken region that stretched from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. The struggles of those who stayed are the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Timothy Egan who follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the dust storms that terrorized America’s High Plains during the Depression, going from sod huts to new framed houses to basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out.

One of the most powerful and thought provoking aspects of “The Worst Hard Time” is the fact that the Midwest has never recovered from the Dust Bowl exodus. Even to this day, farmers in the Midwest going bust. “All across the Grain Belt stand abandoned homesteads, symbols of untold stories of failure, flight from the land, and even suicide.” They leave behing land, farm homes, barns, etc…

Perhaps to entice urban-weary Brits, even the BBC did a story on Mid West Farmers Going Bust. But the Reverse Black Migration Movement is not about trying to become prosperous farmers as much as it is getting out of the way of the insanity and ever increasing cultural doom that life in Urban America is for us. Therefore, land with a farm house and out buildings, electricty, and water already on it is a huge gift just waiting for us. I dream of small Intential Communities of like minded black people with vision seeing this opportunity and sizing it.

A common Buddhist quote is: “Everything Changes.” Sadly, what is true for the “American Farmer,” may be a good thing for black people seeking to join the “Back To The Land” movement. (Click here for Wikipedia’s write up.)

Greetings My People

 

I’ve always thought that the concept of “unconditional love” was an un-attainable one and a concept that sets a person up for disillusion.

But I woke up this morning and realized, that black people can steal my car, pimp my sister, snatch my mother’s purse … and I will still love them.

Black people can terrorize our own neighborhoods, become the new Klan, kill my best friend, and call me every dehumanizing name in the book … and I will still love them.

Now if that isn’t unconditional love, I don’t know what is.

With that, I have arrived at the decision that it really is later than we think. We have gone far beyond the point where we can “save” black people as a whole. So it’s time for those who still can, to save themselves, and in so doing, chart a new path for others to follow.

This blog is intended to:

• Provide creative solutions for the problems that currently face African Americans
• To avoid the traps of remaining stuck in “Victim Status”
• To hopefully provoke thought
• … and occassionally insight humor