Ignorance - A disease best inoculated with knowledge …


What is a disease?
A Disease:
1: An abnormal condition of the organism, or part that impairs normal physiological functioning, especially as a result of infection, inherent weakness, or environmental stress.

2: A condition, or tendency as of society regarded as abnormal, and harmful.

There are many kinds of diseases: sickle cell, leukemia, cancer, polio, heart, and lung disease, and of course my favorite "Ignorance". Just to name a few.

I care to expound on ignorance.

Ignorance is a legitimate infectious virus which has plagued today’s African-Americans for (4oo) plus years. Ignorance acts as any organism would, by penetrating the vulnerable open wounds (in our community), met with little, or no resistance, hindering the normal progression of its host, our people.

Ignorance can be transmitted in several different factions.

Infection: You can be infected with ignorance through unprotected sex, drug abuse, excessive drinking, even through social, as well as political association.

Inheritance: You can inherit ignorance from your parents. Since children learn by example, more so than from instruction. A parents’ moral fiber is the condition of how a child will be raised.

If a parent is consistently successful in its relationships with school, work, people, marriage, its children more than likely will become patient, assertive, and successful.

If a parent is drunk, and abusive (which is displaying ignorance) the child is more likely to be violent, abrasive, and short tempered.

Environmental: You can be affected by environmental ignorance almost every day.
Let’s say you’re driving on the freeway, and an impatient driver decides he needs to be in the fast lane, from the far right lane. He hits his blinker, then immediately merges left, cutting off driver after driver. Then – bam – he hits you! You have just been affected by
“Environmental Ignorance”.
The same goes for the school shootings: Columbine and Virginia Tech. The students were going about their daily routine of education, and ...bam, bam, bam…. "Environmental Ignorance."

But I’d like to focus more on infection:
Infection implies two stages : healthy, then unhealthy. It shows a transformation, it exhibits a degradation.
Ignorance of this nature is extremely damaging, for it can morph into a deep rooted internal take worm. An ignorance as hideous as this, destroys everything that it touches for centuries. (“The gift that keeps on giving”) And the only way to get rid of it, is to have it surgically removed, (“make an incision at the point of entry, and have it sucked out, like the poison it is”) or it’ll just eat away at the central nervous system, until it corrodes its hosts’ entire core, crippling its normal functioning abilities.

This is the ignorance that has plagued the African-American for centuries.

Why..... you may ask?

Well, we find it hard to love ourselves as a people Sure we can tell you our hopes, and dreams. Or how great we are going to be. Yes we can still give credit where credit is do....but it comes with a but...

We still bite into the American propaganda that we’re second class citizens. That we’re not as good whites. This is why when we do achieve a little individual success, or accumulate a little individual wealth, we express the need to look like we have money. We can’t be happy as normal people.
"Let’s just say we’d rather be the star".
Not realizing we already are.
And, if we have to live a "normal life" and labor every day, for "normal wages", we want all the luxuries that go along with it. All the bells, and whistles.
Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive, or be prosperous, but if we don’t make the “A-list”, it’s not the end of the world.
We also still torment ourselves with the memory of slavery over 100 plus years ago.
Over 100 plus years ago, and it still has an affect on us? Damn! That’s deep rooted Ignorance.
Most of us have never even seen a plantation. If you’d like to see a working plantation, go to a prison, not County Jail, or Youth Authority...prison. You work for $9 a month. And the prisons don’t buy from outside. They receive donations, or they make, and grow everything on location. That’s a 1,000 % profit.

Yes, our ancestors were slaves, a long, long, long... time ago, but look at us now we're superstars movie stars, senators, and governors now even president…
“We did that.”
We are not normal people. For us to survive 400 years of slavery, and oppression then, to persevere in the same country that we were enslaved in, is not normal people stuff. Regular people don’t do this. This is an extraordinary feat, we can be proud of.
I know my ancestors would be proud of you.

Why are “well to do” blacks so selfish with others in their race?

...And their favorite line is...
“I didn’t get rich by giving money away”.

“Well to do” blacks suffer from an ignorance called Snobbism: They’ve fought hard to get the success they have, whatever it is, And if you can duplicate their success, or mirror their accomplishments, then they’re not so special. Their value depreciates. It’s like everybody has a goose that lays the golden egg. Also... well to do blacks despise ones’ inferiors... and their condescension arises from social, or intellectual pretension.

It’s the “Willie Lynch”syndrome.
Allow me to elaborate.

Willie Lynch: was a slave owner in the West Indies, and he wrote letters to the slave owners in America, on how to control their slaves, and run a strong plantation.

He said: “You have to turn them against each other".
You have to pit the light against the dark. The young, against the old.
The favored, against the shunned.
The house negro, against the field negro.

Simply: "Divide and conquer."

The machinery of the American Government, and the Justice system has perpetuated this strategy on African-Americans ever since.

For example: A mother, who needs a welfare check, will go against the baby’s father, and she will put him out to receive a check for her, and the baby, instead of allowing the baby's' father to step up, and be responsible.
"Divide, and conquer"

A working father who struggles to make ends meet legally, and his son who watches rap videos, and wants to be "ballin".... so he starts selling drugs.

"Divide, and conquer"

A grandmother, who favors the child with the fairer skin, "good straight hair", and the light eyes more than the darker complexion child. As opposed to loving all her grandchildren equally.
"Divide, and conquer"
True story: I was out clubbing, and I saw this very fine “sista”. With long straight black hair down her back, and a body that wouldn’t quit, and her ass was bananas.
So I said to this fine black sista :
“Damn my African-American sistas are gorgeous!...”
She looked at me, and said:
“Oh I’m not black, I'm part Indian.” not recognizing her African-American traits, or features. "Divide, and conquer..."
So my retort was:
“In dee end, you still a nigga.”

This type of infection is called

"The Forbidden Mirror."

This beautiful African-American sister would rather be a low budget concoction of another race, than to be a top of the line, pure 100% African American goddess, in her own race.
Anytime you claim a percentage of another nationality, then you’re considered watered down. A cheapened, devalued version.
It’s like buying liquor: you want the 80-90% proof, not the watered down 25% proof. And that’s where she not knowing diluted her own worth.
She can either be cheap champagne, or expensive vodka.

Also, let's say you’re out promoting your entrepreneuralship (like I have for so many years), and you patronize an African American. The male is more reluctant to support you than the female, why...
because.... you look like him. And if he couldn’t do it, and you look like him, then he's not going to believe you can do it. His attitude will be: "how dare you try to be something, when he knows firs hand you’re not going to be successful."
This is simply just another case of...

“The Forbidden Mirror”.

Subconsciously: you look too much like a loser, but...the loser you look like is him.

How do we treat this disease?

We have to treat ignorance with literacy.
We have to "inoculate information" into the main brain. We have to make it second nature to think... quote scholars... be philosophical.

Willie Lynch once said:
“Black women are like mother horses, if you teach her to eat from your hand, she in turn will teach her colts to do the same.”
This is a horrible depiction of my Nubian Goddesses, and I’m appalled, and ashamed to have to repeat such a demeaning statement... but it has a very very mi nute fact in it.

Women who are on welfare solely with no other legit income, and seek no solution for their tumultuous situation, their children will more than likely utilized the system, in one way, or another. Either they’re incarcerated, or on welfare, or in foster care. There are success stories with public assistance a lot of them, but... right now I'm treating ignorance.

Let’s turn this negative into a positive, shall we?
Let’s give them (African-American women) a different hand to eat from. Let’s give them the hand of confidence, and self esteem, or the hand of assurance, and encouragement.

Instead of dinner, and a movie,
do ‘dinner, and a museum’. Instead of chocolates, and flowers...
give her a rare book, or novel.

Give kids library cards. History books are boring, unless you don’t have to read them but you read them when you want too. Find movies that evolved from books, and buy the book for the kids.

Instead of Disney Land, go to Science Fairs.
Join a book clubs, instead of a music club. If it becomes second nature to buy reading materials,
she will teach her children to:
“read first, and ask questions later”.

Decorate your house with encouragement, and positive slogans.
Use the power of positive thinking:
Norman Vincent Peale...
Also I suggest...
“if you can see it, and you can believe in it, you can achieve it”...

Kids go in, and out the fridge constantly on a daily basis. Leave them a positive phrase in big letters for them to read every day, (the same phrase.) Something like:
“A quitter never wins, a winner never quits”
, or “Be a leader, not a follower”
, or even “Only dopes do dope”. This strategy also works the same in the bathroom, leave them positive messages, like impossible = I'm possible,
More Silence, less violence...
Elimination of Discrimination with one nation... "take the cotton out your ears, and put it in your mouth"
Then find positive acronyms. like P.E.A.C.E. Positive Energy Aspires Creative Evolution.
There are many of them out there, or you can create you own.
It doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you do read more. The more you read the more you will aspire to be intellectual.

Literacy manifests information, Information breeds knowledge,
Knowledge begets intellect,
and Intellect bears wisdom.

In conclusion we have to give books, and literature the same quality time we give the television, and the movie theatre. We want to watch the playoffs, and the fights. And the ladies wants their TV shows, and the kids want their cartoons.

If you watch TV for 9 hours, split that in half: 4 ½ hrs. for books, 4 ½ hrs. for TV.
If you know your shows come on (in 3’s or 4’s) plan for it.
Get your reading out of the way. The equivalent of the time allotted for three, or four shows.
CARTER G WOODSON:
says try this for 3 months straight.
We guarantee you will see immaculate results.
"GUARANTEE"
But..... to tune in to Television everyday, is really just tuning out.
As African Americans we need any, and every advantage we can get....
Because we are the future,
we are the dream, and we have the ability.

So when opportunity knocks, we can answer emphatically.

JAYE SWIFT

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