The Nation of Islam and a good memoir

i'm reading this memoir thats pretty good by Sonsyrea Tate entitled Do Me Twice. yes, i know, going off the title, i would never have picked this book up. sounds like something by Zane. but Sonsyrea Tate has another book i read a while back- Little X. its about her life growing up in the Nation of Islam.
her paternal grandparents converted when the Nation of Islam was becoming popular in the 60's, and her mother converted when she married her father. she and her family attended the NOI temples and schools, they dressed as the NOI and they followed the religious rituals. the first book is more about being a child and the standards and beliefs that she received as a child from the NOI. the second book is more about her problems with the beliefs she had and her rebellion from the religion.

here is an excerpt from Do Me Twice:

"i thought about my growing resentment toward Islam as i'd known it and realized the main thing i disliked was that it changed every decade or so. at least in America it did. it was as if it was being created and re-created as we went along. i needed a religion that would remain the same when everything else changed, something solid to hold on to in a confusing, ever-changing world. if your religion is confusing and unstable, you're in trouble. the very name of my religious organization changed three times before i was fifteen.
we started out as the Nation of Islam, then after Elijah Muhammad's death our organization evolved and was renamed the World Community of Al-Islam in the west. we were told to consider ourselves Bililian Muslims, after the darkest Muslim that followed the original prophet of Islam in Mecca. (before then, we'd been taught not to associate with the Muslims of middle-eastern orthodoxy because our Nation of Islam version of Islam was different, and, for us, better than their ancient, foreign religion.) Elijah Muhammad's son, Warith Deen Muhammad, who led or organization and re-named it the World Community of AL-Islam in the West, changed the name of our organization again. He now said we would call ourselves the American Muslim Mission.
as we changed customs and practices to align ourselves with the world-wide Orthodox Muslim community, Warith Deen Muhammad said we would no longer follow a central leader because Arab Muslims did not do that and we were modeling ourselves after them."

while i am far from religious, i find it one of the most interesting subjects to study. a year or so ago, i was obsessed with Islam-i was reading almost any book (suggestion: Muhammad by Yahiya Emerick-very very good read about the Prophet Muhammad and the spread of Islam)i could find on the subject and even tried learning Arabic (still in the process...). and now i'm reading more about the black power movement, and the Nation of Islam was and has been a strong constant in the struggle.

now that i live in Brooklyn, i have a new perspective on them as a group. i see them every now and them in the Atlantic Terminal Subway Station or the 125th Station in Harlem selling The Final Call (their newspaper), which i try to buy when i can.
on one hand, i respect them and wish that some things they implemented in the lives of their followers could have been duplicated on a mass scale for all blacks. for example, Sonsyrea talks about how they learned to love themselves as black children in school, and were taught to hold Africa and its cultures to the utmost respect. they were a community based organization that embraced collectivism and community living-buying food from other blacks, bulding businesses, hospitals and organizations that were aimed at blacks to help blacks. and it shouldn't be forgotten that this is the organization that fostered Malcolm X. Elijah Muhammad also enforced one of the best diet plans than many nutritionists. these are things the black community needed and still needs.
however, on the other hand, i could never join an organization like this. for one, its a religious organization. i would never associate myself with any religion, let alone a theistic one. second, the NOI is a very patriarchal religion, but then again so is Islam (and so is Christianity). Sonsyrea speaks about wanting to go into the work force and earn her own money while her mother was trying to teach her that her job was to be a mother and a wife before anything else (her mother had 10 children, while their hot water, electricity and telephone were being turned off for lack of money). the Million Man March is one example-having a march for black men as if black women have not suffered in this oppression that they have and as if we have nothing to add. almost all the articles in their newspaper are written by a man to a man, and the only advertisements or promotions i see in the paper mentioning women speaking have to do with cooking. in addition, Louis Farrakhan is absurdly homophobic, and i've discussed my thought on homophobia in the black community already.
mainly my problem (my problem with all religions) is the dogma involved. Elijah Muhammad's diet plan is one of the best i've heard, but he forced this on his followers and told them they would go to hell if they didn't follow it. its almost humorous to think i'd go to hell for eating pork and white rice...

think. comment. criticize. read the books.

Know Thyself

here are two websites where your can take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test:
similarminds.com
Humanmetrics.com
and you can decipher your type here at Typelogic.com (as well as on the websites themselves).
there are apparently 16 types of personalities in the world, each having four aspects to it. you can find out more about the test here.
i'm an INTP, although i took a more comprehensive test from this book i got a couple years back from Barnes & Nobles.
aaaaand Testcafe.com does free Enneagram Tests as well. it is similar to the MBTI, but there are only 9 different types in this test. i'm a number 5.

Thierry Le Goues

i don't know why i haven't done a post about this AMAZING photographer before. one of my friends showed me this guy, and here is his website. i particularly like Antik Batik 3 and Antik Batik 2 and Popular.

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong...I don't feel frightened by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as i can tell."

~Richard Feynman

Daguerreotypes of Blacks

the Daguerreotype is a type of photography developed by Louis Daguerre. it is a photo printed in a combination of Mercury and Silver, making the photo almost mirror-like. it was popularized around the 1840's in the United States.
Louis Agassiz photographed the blacks that are nude to show the differences between the race, ultimately that blacks were inferior. the black female in the nude is an enslaved teenage girl named Delia. the male is unnamed (possibly Renty?) but it is noted that he is from The Congo.
those photos in particular are the most striking to me. aside from the fact that they're degraded, especially Delia, by being stripped to the waste (the man was completely nude, although i could not find the photo), the eyes say so much. but the faces of all the blacks speak volumes really, not just the eyes. they're rebellious and painful and angry and twisted all at the same time.

Tavis Smiley vs. Al Sharpton

my dad sent me this e-mail about this "feud" thats going on between Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley about Obama and a "Black Agenda".
this is the audio of Al Sharpton's show that Smiley called in on. here are some more words Sharpton had to say on the subject along with Boyce Watkins chiming in. and this is what Cornel West had to say about it.

basically, the problem is that Tavis wants some sort of open dialogue between black leaders (some self-proclaimed "black leader"....some not) about whether or not they think Obama should have a "black agenda"-that being a separate agenda for black people, such as him directly addressing the the black unemployment rate (which is at least 4 or 5 times higher than whites), the state of health for blacks, racial profiling, black on black crime, and overall racism.
Sharpton feels as though Obama does/has begun to address these needs, and feels as though Smiley ignores these advances while waiting for Obama to openly say "this is my BLACK agenda" or....walk around with a Black Power shirt on.
Tavis has been one of the biggest critics of Obama since he was in the primaries. he has called Obama out on just about everything a citizen can call their president out on (some being legitimate criticisms, some not). he feels as though Obama does not have a black agenda, fails to address the needs of blacks, and that he definitely SHOULD have a black agenda mainly and/or solely because he is black.

now, i will be the first to admit that i don't like Al Sharpton. i think he's a media pundit that hypes things that don't need to be hyped and acts as if speaking about things and appearing on talk shows, radio shows, and the like are going to change the state of black affairs. nor do i like the way that he comes off as if he speaks for all blacks and is the black leader for this generation. he isn't. we don't have one (nor do i think we need one. we need solidarity, not a sole leader). and all that is aside from his PERM!...which i won't get into.

and i don't have much respect for Smiley either. aside from him having people like 50 Cent on his show, conversing as if Fitty is someone that should be a respected member of the black community who helps out teens (while ignoring the facts that he has done so while doing a modern day minstrel show that he labels "hip hop")and some other mess. he also is sponsored mainly by Wal-Mart and State-Farm-two of the biggest and most corrupt companies in the United States. Wal-Mart shuts down mom and pop businesses by selling dirt cheap crap made is sweat shops overseas by people of color and State Farm was one of the many insurance companies that had some of the most complaints filed against them after Hurricane Katrina (treating blacks that had been paying insurance for 500 years as if they weren't owed a dime). and he's questioning Obama's commitment to blacks? i guess that only after he's been paid a nice sum by these companies that exploit people of color.

but i can see both their points. Obama does need to address some needs of black people. although he could very well have been elected without a single black person casting a vote in his favor, i think it would say a lot about him if he did nothing to help out other minorities in this country, knowing himself how hard it is as a minority....in the same way that i would have expected Hilary to do something beyond the norm in the areas such as reproductive rights, gender relations, and other womens' issues.
on the other, i can see Sharpton's point that he is doing some things, such as working on healthcare and that he has to be the president for all of America. he should not have become the POTUS if he wanted to be the leader of only a certain group of people in the Unites States. he also said that Obama shouldn't be held solely in charge of handling things we as blacks need to be doing ourselves. and that is so true.
on another note, it's a bit absurd to expect someone working in the system to change the system. we cannot expect Obama to end the forms of oppression that people of color, that women, that LGBT's, that all groups of oppressed people feel while working for the people that legislate, enforce and encourage these types of oppression. it just does not happen that way. so, in a way, i think Smiley is asking too much from Obama.

but all this is assuming either of these men are being genuine. in reality, these two men are media pundits that need coverage and attention in order to get paid. i wouldn't be surprised if something comes out in a month that Tavis shot Al while Al is saying he caught Tavis smoking crack. i mean, its all for show with some of of these celebrities and you can never quite tell when they or their statements are completely legit.

i found this clip of The Boondocks (love this episode. LOVE the show.) of Rollo Goodlove (who is basically Al Sharpton with a different name. McGrduer's portrayal of Al is so spot on) and Ann Coulter fighting on television, then showing their true colors backstage:


think. comments. criticize. check outThe Griot.com

Truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to....There is only you-your relationship with others and with the world-there is nothing else....Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and your have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing."
~J. Krishnamurti

Crack Babies

sometimes when i'm reading a book, the author will mention other books that are written more in depth about whatever subject they may be tackling, and i usually will look those books up...and so on and so on. right now, i'm still reading Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington and in it, she has mentioned the book Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts, which i've also began to read.
the area that they overlap in is when they're talking about forced sterilization and the myth of the "crack baby".

this is what Washington had to say about crack babies:

"African Americans and whites use cocaine at similar rates, but blacks are twice as likely as whites to use it in crack form. however, 80% of drug users are white, and in raw numbers, twice as many whites as blacks use cocaine. this means that white crack users should be twice as easier to find, but most peoples' image of the crack user is informed by media accounts that had focused nearly exclusively on African American users' infants, dubbed "crack babies" are always portrayed as black. during eighteen years as a news and science editor at metropolitan dailies and national magazines, i have never seen a published photograph of a white crack baby.

...None of this [exaggerated "facts" about crack babies] had been demonstrated by research and none of this was true. although exposure to cocaine in the uterus can damage a fetus, a baby cannot be born addicted to cocaine, as children are sometimes born addicted to other narcotic drugs. moreover, the "diagnosis" of "crack baby" is based upon a woman's positive drug test, not upon the baby's clinical picture, so it makes no distinction between mothers who smoked crack habitually and those who did so rarely. there is no such medical entity as a crack baby."

this is something i have never heard before. like anyone else growing up in the '90's, i remember the stories about crack babies, screeching like animals in dark corners of the hospital, resisting any type of affection and ultimately doomed for life. and i had this idea until i read these books. i've since done some research on it, and all of what i have found seems to back Washington and Roberts up.
here is what Roberts had to say about this myth:

"...there is no good evidence to support this caricature of the crack baby. Nevertheless, the frightening image spawned a cottage industry of angry letters to the editor calling for harsh measure to keep crack addicts from having babies. 'Reducing her welfare payments will not stop this woman from having babies.' wrote one commentator. 'The only way to stop her is the dreaded 'S' words-involuntary sterilization, either surgically or with Norplant. the other alternative is to allocate our resources to caring for unlimited numbers of crack babies while other children continue to be without health care.' the figures cited are so astronomical that it seems as if most Black children in America are crack babies impaired by a host of defects.
The stories about hopelessly defective crack babies represent a new kind of biodeterminism. Instead of transmitting immutable deficiencies through their genes, these poor Black mothers inflict similar damage in utero, 'callously dooming a new generation to a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority.' The negative predictions easily become self-fulfilling prophecies when adoptive parents are afraid to take home a crack baby, teachers expect the children to be incaable of learning, and legislators believe it is pointless to waste money on programs for children who cannot possibly achieve.

Killing the Black Body is mainly about reproductive rights and how controlling them has been just another attempt of many to break down the black community by the government in attempts to forcibly sterilize black women (although it should be noted that this has happened at the same rate to Native American women link 1 and link 2 and Latina women link 1 and link 2 ).

here are the links that i found to back up their arguments:
NY Times: The Epidemic that wasn't.
The Myth of the Crack Baby
What about the Drug Babies?
From Crack Babies to Normal Kids

the gist of what they are saying is that the idea of the crack baby was the working of faulty experiments and studies along with exaggerated facts. the only test that was done during the time this myth was popularized as done with only 23 women with no control group to speak of. it neglected to note that many women who use crack cocaine also use it in conjuction with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, making the tests and statistics on "crack babies" inconclusive. and, like one of the links i posted talks about, the follow-up tests were pretty much self-fulfilling prophecies.
these children weren't forming attachments to the nurses, not because they were monsters, but because these nurses were rejecting these babies assuming they would reject their advances! these babies were put in dark corners, lacked direct eye contact with nurses, and were treated not as babies, but as monsters. thus, adding to their developmental challenges. and the follow-up tests did not account for the impoverished lifestyles many of these children were living under. some children were noted as being slow to develop basic motor skills, such as grasping eating utensils. what was ignored was the fact that some of these children did not eat on a regular basis, and when they did eat, it may have been from a trash can...in which case they did not need utensils.

the insinuation (if not overt reasoning) these two authors put forth for why this crack baby myth was propelled by some doctors, nurses, and the media was to push legislations against women of color, to cut welfare programs or the funding behind services like WIC, to paint women on welfare in a more negative light, and to act as reasoning behind forced sterilization. and seeing how this was the 1980's, and many of these doctors and nurses should have seen the glaring disparities in the crack baby entity, it is not hard to surmise that there must have been ulterior motives.

the point is not to show that crack has no effect on a fetus. of course it does. however, it is not anymore than tobacco, and possibly less harmful than alcohol abuse.

here is a video i found on youtube about crack babies that looks like it was filmed i the early '90's that further shows these stereotypes and uninformed assumptions.

comment. think. criticize. always questions the media.

"I discovered that it is necessary, to believe in nothing....No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea."
~Daisetz T. Suzuki