Seek out Spaces where you are Valued - Part 1

What? 3 years for beating up and kidnapping a black woman? That's Outrageous!

The dysfunctional approach of the black collective doesn’t play in other arenas and they will enforce the decency and standards that are necessary for a civilized society regardless of black whinning and falling about on the floor- So be it!

As an empowerment writer, I not only talk about how black women can avail themselves of more, in the area of romance by being open to men beyond their race, I am also a strong advocate of black women broadening their social horizons in all respects, be it at work, at school etc. I believe black women must reintegrate into the larger society to live fulfilled lives, and they must seek out areas where they are wanted, valued and cherished to achieve their goals and ambitions.

Seeking spaces that are optimal and where you are valued and valuable is a must for the black woman who wants to be nurtured and uplifted as opposed to drained and crushed by abuse and misuse and the put downs and mocking, of those who take delight in ensuring that no good deed of black women goes unpunished.

If you stop a black person on the street and ask them “in which environment would you expect a black woman would fine she is valued”, they will more than likely say, 'it can only be among fellow black people.'

Well, that may have been the case many years ago if ever.

I have had two recent experiences to underscore my position that acceptance and value for most black women lies outside the black setting. I will start with the bad experience and end with a good (supporting experience) in the next blog post.

A couple of months ago, a charity which I am involved in, put on its annual barbecue. The volunteers (of which I am one), were expected to set up the barbecue as early as 9 am in the morning for a 1pm start. Since I had to leave the house early to arrive by 9 am, I didn’t have time to get a good breakfast. I thought I might catch a spare moment between 9 and 1pm, to have some food, but there was so much to do because we were such a small team. By the time the barbecue was on the grill I was ravenously hungry and couldn’t wait for the first batch of stuff to be ready. This was my first mistake, letting myself get hungry and thus in a vulnerable position (as I will explain).

A couple of black men where manning the barbecues. I missed the first batch because I had to go on an errand. You can thus imagine how hungry and forward I was when the next batch came along.
There were two other black women who managed to get ahead of me. They spent a couple of minutes asking for an extra portion which they eventually got. I decided then that I too would dare to ask for an extra portion-due to how hungry I was. This was my second mistake because the black ‘chef’ suddenly made it his business to announce to all and sundry about the greedy Oliver Twist folk who were asking for more.

My third mistake was to try to argue my case rather than get the hell out of the dogde. My response was, 'But I have seen you just give people ahead of me an extra helping…so why not me…In fact make that my fourth and fifth mistake because it was a weightier mistake to even begin to engage in that conversation, I should have simply muttered something like, “well its just that I am starving,” or made some excuse about not having had breakfast as I calmly started stepping, unfortunately hunger had rewired my brain and I thought that the ‘this is so unfair’ argument would get me somewhere. It didn’t, because sure enough another black man who had been about five yards away doing something else suddenly seeing a chance to put a black woman down/in her place/gang up on/or support his black bros against the evil black woman, you name it, suddenly decided it was his place to jump in (thus calling even more attention to the situation!), saying something about ‘excuses’ and ‘shutting down the extra requests’ starting from moi. Of course by then I was back to my senses, realising what I was exposing myself to by standing there thinking I could argue my right with 'hostiles'.

The need to explain yourself and save face can be overwhelming at times (you know how sometimes you want to save a situation and paint a better impression than that which has gone against you but you don’t realize you are digging a bigger hole!). I also think I was smarting over this reaction from someone who had, only a few hour earlier, been in receipt of my generosity because I had gone out of my way to find him one of the kitchen equipment he needed to set up the barbecue!



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You see we BWE bloggers also need to have these little reminders about what we preach, that on a whole black men feel no sense of reciprocity towards even the very black women who they received large amount of help and assistance from, even assistance received mere seconds ago! They actually feel entitled to the favors of black women just by being black men and feel 'noway' about offering anything in return!

Anyway, when I got out of there, I realised that I had fallen into a trap. Black men carry around an inordinate amount of anger towards black women, which can be triggered at any moment and the fact that you and them were friendly etc just beforehand is never really enough reason for them not to seize upon a chance to express their disrespect for black women and delight in an opportunity to show the black women up. Black women need to be aware of this especially as we are forced to deal with these men in work and school situations even if we have put necessary limits on interacting with them socially.

Another thing to point out here is that when a person lacks personal power in their lives, they misuse the first hint of it. Given that a host of black men feel a sense of powerlessness (the tendency to blame others, e.g. 'the man', black women etc that we have come to observe with black men is a clear expression of this felt power deficiency), black women are really going to have to avoid a whole host of them. Note that the black man was to all intents and purposes, just the cook for the occasion (the bulk of the money for the barbecue came from patrons mostly white). However the little ‘power’ and importance the position granted him was immediately misused as an opportunity to tell people off and ration chicken wings lol! SMH. He spent the day as the 'jerk-chicken gatekeeper', and this is exactly how power deficient people act.

At the end of the day there were piled and piles of grilled stuff left because he had been controlling it that tightly. Of course his 'hommies' got to go home with some 'take out' and I got to rededicate myself to the sayings of my wise mother to always “eat before you go to any party or gathering.’' Hunger and the actions that result from it can indeed put you in a vulnerable place.

TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT BLOG POST

 


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Supposing I wanted to
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Don’t get used as a tool for other peoples battles

Many of us are easily be grabbed by our emotions and deployed for the use of winning the battles of others who have hidden schemes and agenda (that don’t profit us one bit) lying below the surface. Over and over again I see black women fall into this trap. Because we feel harshly treated and victimized by society we tend to project our feelings of the injustice unto others and the situation they are undergoing, reading their situation as the same oppression and victimization like we are suffering. We rush into battle for them because they are like a proxy of our situation. This particular response of black women has been used against us to our great detriment.

Many years ago I worked with a woman who had this ongoing litigatious campaign against the company we both worked for. I think she was an anti-capitalist of some type who was just out to undermine companies, one after another in her grand scheme to impose a different social order. No one knew about it till she had sprung into action and launched a series of industrial tribunal cases against the organisation. She used to go around collecting 'evidence' and grievances from unsuspecting staff who she would then cite in her latest complaint without them even being aware they were about to be asked to answer for themselves. You can imagine how this could suddenly put the career prospects of a hard working staff who had no prior issues with management in jeopardy. By the time she left she had taken down about three other staff members whose situation within the organisation became untenable, many were long term workers who fell for her sob stories and curious ability to charm and win over folk.

Even though I believed she was a bit 'off' and tended to avoid her and her overtures for me to jump on the 'grievance' train I still had some sympathy. I framed the issue as 'The big bad corporation crushing its lowly put upon workers'. One day during a 'union' meeting someone said, 'What happens when this company folds because she wins a multimillion pound lawsuit'. Do you know that faster than you could say 'zombie followers', my priorities suddenly straightened out. In a flash I saw the critical issues at hand and what was at stake where before I had been overcome by her cry baby antics and my imposing of the 'victimized worker against evil capitalist corporation' frame on the situation. The truth was if she was awarded a substantial sum the company would fold and with it the jobs of over 27 staff members!

Love Damian Hirst's Art Design for the Olympic Stadium 

We have to be careful about imposing popular framing on every situation without doing investigation into the facts. There are folk out there framing narratives and creating memes about issues so that the lazy 21^stcentury western citizen will vote, organise or oppose issues based on their quick imposition of these readily circulating view points. You cannot be naïve in today’s society, in fact there is no excuse, because it is relatively easy to seek and find clarity on any issue. Folks who have less than progressive intentions are co-opting civil rights, freedom of speech, gender equality and all sorts of other progressive ideals to further their own agenda.

Stop letting your emotions get the best of you.

Not every crying person is a victim, not every battle is a 'civil rights' battle which should be taken up and embraced by black people because 'we know how it feels'. Some people are rightly being brought to justice, are rightly being scrutinized or opposed for their views.

When I gave it some thought, I realized that this particular worker never did any work, she was forever chatting, doing other stuff on the computer, rejecting management direction and directives. There was even talk of a mental illness but no matter, she did eventually win a big payout after many years and an upheld appeal. The amount appeared as a debt in the company's statement of accounts for many years till it was finally cleared off. Now that there is a backlash against Wall Street and greedy corporations it will favor litigatious employees and career grievance collectors, your company could be at risk.

So we finally saw what she was about but it was too late. I still wonder why we were so taken in to the point were a number lost their jobs to an obvious trouble makers antics. My conclusion is that because the company is set up to work around 'social justice,' accusations of discrimination and victimization would elicit a strong response in many of us staff who would then forget to think and be objective. Indeed as an organisation the whole personal responsibility side of things was discredited and seen as victim blaming. It just took one person shouting discrimination, sexism etc to plug into our blind spots and emotions.

I want to emphasis that I am not saying that we have run out of civil rights issues that need addressing, bit we have to be careful that others are not manipulating us into serving their interests to our own detriment.

Be Knowledgeable

Read broadly - if you are an all-round knowledgeable person who has the basics when it comes to most most relevant and current social issues from finance to global warming, your broad base understanding can provide some protection against being easily taken in.

London Olympics is Over, It was amazing, I am exhausted...

The Queen arrives for the Olympic opening ceremony

I know I should put down a few thoughts about the London 2012 Olympics but I am emotionally exhausted from cheering- and laughing and crying -on the best of British! Let me just say it brought out the best in everyone in such an amazing and never to be matched way, I absolutely loved every minute and was happy to play a small part in selection of volunteers who really made the games giving thousands of hours for free to sort out lost americans, and hand out free ice-lollies. They did us all proud...

...even the weather behaved itself.
over to you Rio!

My Latest e-books are now available to buy from my website book page or from Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

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Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
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Supposing I wanted to
Date a White Guy...?
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You dont have to dignify every discussion and comment

Happy Last Week of the Olympics, Team GB is doing Brits Proud, I am sitting at my computer frantically checking sites to see if I can get a couple of tickets so I can get down to the Olympic Park!
if anyone knows any helpful info please hit me up by email   ;-)

Meanwhile Rosario Dawson dates Danny Boyle (Oscar winning Director of Olympic Opening Ceremony)
courtesy Daily Mail 

Post begins...

The truth is that a lot of black folk are engaged in unproductive and downright useless discussions and past times. The fact that some rapper somewhere said something doesn’t mean it deserves any attention or critical analysis as is quite often devoted to the rubbish that proceeds from the mouth of a good bunch of people identifying themselves as in this 'job' role.

I am all about social commentary and calling people in the public sphere out when it is necessary, but I was disappointed when Allison Samuels decided to make a big story over some twitter personality somewhere in some corner of the web and her comments about Gabby Douglas's hair. Well I guess she has to write something as a journalist, but I still wonder why some nonentity talking BS somewhere should capture headlines.

We do not need to dignify every rubbish with a response and with an article!

So someone somewhere said Gabby's hair needed to be adjusted to their aesthetic taste...well NEWS FLASH, idiots abound on twitter. There is no reason to turn foolish uttering into legitimate/valid argument by giving them any focus. What next, giving voice to folk who say black women should not be allowed out of their houses?

Congratulations Gabby

Allison Samuels article seemed to want to use the commentary to once again to blame 'the white social system' yet in 2012, black women do not have this justification/excuse for their foolish utterings about their own features.

I can imagine there must be a thousand folks now lining up to make their own foolish comments about black women's features etc, knowing that it might well be the thing to give them their fifteen minutes of fame.

What black women must learn

One of the greatest challenges of our modern era is to know how to manage information and we sure are swamped with it! Billions of data coming at you each day, vying for your attention, and most of it is unproductive or can lead you up unproductive alleys and diverted from applying yourself for your own betterment.

A lot of it is brain clutter.

Some scientist have conceptualized certain information areas in our brain as vessels that fill up with information over the course of the day and these areas then empty out when you sleep. This is why you do your best thinking and learning in the mornings and morning hours are best devoted to intellectually tasking projects while routine tasks can be done on autopilot later in the day. Notice that at some point in the day, you cannot think as well, or you just cannot think creatively over problems/issues (this is more likely as you get older)
.

Do you sometimes notice that it is in the morning that 'ideas' occur to you especially about things that have been bugging you previously and you could not think of an answer to. Simply clicking on and reading all sorts of stuff (useless), takes up short term and medium term memory space (afterall you can remember what Kanye West said, or the latest utterance of Nene, so data is being stored whether you know it is and whether you believe you are doing something mindless or not), which then will need to be offloaded overnight before the space is available again for something productive!

Some of us feel that because it costs us nothing financially to 'click' on a webpage and read 10 minutes of something or other (a link from facebook for instance) then there is nothing lost. The truth is that more is lost than you could ever imagine. If in doubt add up the time you have so far lost this year from mindless surfing and you will see that you have lost the time it would have taken to write 2 books, the time you needed to learn how to run your own website, how to paint, learn how to trade shares even set up and manage your own business.

There are things that don’t require your attention and emotional investment. A black woman who is focussed on making a success of life will have to devise her own template and filter for sorting information and a brutal criteria for eliminating information that is just of no immediate value or use to her even if the information is somewhat useful!

Instead of giving even 10 seconds to the latest screed said by someone somewhere, why don’t you start working on your Nobel prize invention. Too many of us are distracted by foolishness to ever pursue and live our dreams. Get on with being productive in life, stop responding to and listening to everything and anything.

How do you manage information?

My Latest e-books are now available to buy from my website book page or from Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Buy Here or Buy at Amazon

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Buy Here or Buy at Amazon

Supposing I wanted to
Date a White Guy...?
Buy Here or Buy at Amazon