Sunday, September 24, 2006

MY BIO..BLOG STYLE





I decided to write my bio after seeing Star Parker’s. Hell, she’s got nothing on me.

Here goes:

I was born in Washington, D.C. around the corner from Daddy Grace’s church. I grew up in a house with an over extended family, a tin tub for baths, a coal bin for heat, and a wooden two seat out house that smelled like gassed shit 24-7. We had potatoes nearly every meal and pork shoulder on Saturdays because ham was too expensive. Despite it all, I think we were content. In school I was a smart curious student, outspoken and even then had a social conscious (At 14 years old, I remember seeing Emitt Till's body then declaring war on racist America), but didn’t excel in anything academic. I suppose I got caught up in the ghetto's non promotional educational syndrome, because there weren’t any college grads among my immediate family or aunts and uncles. But I thought I was good looking, so I chased the girls.

Thanks to assistant principal Bobby Boyd, I made it out of high school, barely, and attended Central State University for two years. I withdrew because I was beginning to mature and felt I needed to stop being a spoiled non directional negro living off my struggling mother, so I cashed in my Naval Reserve chit and went to the Vietnam War.

Vietnam changed my life forever. Not in the way it changed most young military men, it changed me because I found out who hated me more than the Southeast Asians. This was a watershed period in my life and would instill a determination and fire in me like nothing I’d experience in this lifetime. See, I refused to let those who wished to grow a colonial dick, do so at my expense. I rebelled and refused “negrodization” to the point where I was told I couldn’t reenlist and this, mind you, was during war time.

I did get married during this time and had my son. I remember that was a very proud time in my life, but also a scary one. How could a confused person like me raise a child and have family? I knew I had problems conforming to the white man’s world. Not that I wanted to kill them like they did Emitt or anything that radical, I just wanted to be a Black man with his own voice. (Something a Black woman can never completely understand) But we all know if you don’t fit their profile, they lock the door to the food, point their little white blaming finger at you knowing well you’ve been historically “conditioned” to fail under their contemporary concomitant systems of white supremacy. If one has any insight, they would know their only out as a black person, if they want to live in debt and have the "prestige" of living similar to white Americans, is to bend over and get the colonial white dick as an extra helping while pretending you are just another man in America. The alternative is to go bum or gangsta.

Gangsta it was. I robbed warehouses, sold drugs, ran women, dabbled in stolen securities, and strapped down with a 357 magnum. In my unconcious state I felt I was finally a man (even though I only had a ghetto voice) until I got my ass thrown in the penitentiary and became a field “nigger” for the all white federal bureau of prisons. But even then, I struck a small blow for my manhood, I organized a food strike when the head of the prison system was visiting and that embarrassed the warden. No one ever told I lead the strike, honor among the criminally insane I suppose.

When I was released I decided that I would not go to prison again. It was most humiliating and talk about an experience that makes you psychologically impotent. So I used what little business skill I had acquired from previous legitimate ventures and tried the import-export business. I traveled to Africa and there I realized that Black folks world wide were in serious trouble. After a few years of back and forth, this didn’t work out either and I was going on 50 years old and still no solid “normal” life. I did the only thing a black, out of work, no skills, ex felony, could do, I went back to finish college.

The only major that tweaked my curiosity was Ethnic Studies. It seemed this was what I needed to help me understand and sort all those conflicting emotions I acquired living in America under white rule. Man, was I not disappointed, this was a thrilling journey. When I graduated from Cal-State, I had cracked the door, but needed more. San Francisco State’s Masters program became my heaven and hell. It all fell into place. I understood what had happen to me, my family, my friends, my ancestors, and my people. I can only say I wish every Black person or non white person could take the journey, the one that will drive you to the depths of depression because you come away seeing so clearly.

While I was in San Francisco State, I got a job teaching believe it or not. Yes, I became a felony public school teacher. This was not a good match in the white man’s colony. A brass balled Black man with a degree in Black Studies and a history of resisting colonialism. I lasted for ten years, hiding, teaching the “unteachable,” the throw away children until they finally caught on. One day the Human Resources Manager sat me down and told me that I wasn’t the person he’d hired. I told him he was mistaken. I was let go.

So Ms. Parker ain’t got nothing on me. All she did was exercise her already preprogrammed negressness and as expected was paid and promoted by the colonial masters to show other negros of their choosing how they too can be successful if they do as they’re told and suppress their true voice (if they could ever find it) and bend over. Nothing new with her bio….