I'm tired of staring at my copy of The Crisis Of The Negro Intellectual. I think I'll read it.
I don't think there's any true crisis...perhaps a medling predicament.
The title works against itself these days, but I can see why it may have been hot when it was originally penned.
I suppose I'm afraid of being sucked into some innovative argyle and dreadlocked cliche`.
I'm certainly "negro" (I'm not amarillo, blanco or azul)
And I like to using my brain...
And I live...so what if I qualify as a "Negro Intellectual" and I've already learned how to get around the 'crisis', but then I read the book, and regress to how Harold says I'm supposed to act and feel and be? I don't want to learn more things that should offend me. Ignorance isn't bliss, but if it is, I've got a full carton fo non-bliss already and it goes bad on the 26th.
Activism is and individualism are so skewed and compartmentalized these days that they just cancel themselves out.
Al Sharpton is a joke, whether his purposes and issues have merit or not. He's a black man with a southern accent and a perm.
And that's all we see.
Hung up on race.
Hung up on sex (gender).
Such clever devices to stunt our growth.
Get ahold of anything written by Eugene H. Peterson.
Anything.
That's personhood.
It takes people with purpose to look around and clean things up.
Abolishing exclusivity syndromes and complexes like racism and sexism and classism is not the goal. The goal is much higher, and requires a re-ordering of things before it can happen.
It's like making a bloody sammich man...
Who wants to cook in a dirty kitchen?
We were put here to cook, so lets just get the kitchen clean.
Trying to move forward with any kind of reform or virtuous flourishing of arts and letters is impossoible if your bread is lying in a puddle of fish juice, and your slice of cheese has cigarette asshes on it.
That's America, and it's worth cleaning up.
I love and hate America, and that's love.
*mind meld*
my parting question before I leave this six acre organic farm in rural southern Maryland, and sojourn once again on the streets of philly, is this:
"Are you sure?"
cuz I'm getting Life.
scream at me.
