Spend on your Dream!

As an individual there will be areas in your life that will require you spending real money and effort to build up, while other aspects will come naturally to you.

You might have to spend loads of money to train yourself on public speaking for instance, yet your friend might be a natural in public speaking, she has never had a moment of stage freight and cant understand why people have nerves or cant sleep well a night before any presentation. I certainly know that I have spent loads of money looking for the right formula for weight loss for me (because it is indeed about finding the right formula that works for you from the thousands of methods that are out there-thanks Cher for being willing to share your weight loss surgery experience with us).

I think it is of vital importance to know that you will have to spend your money for self improvement in certain areas of life and not others. It is important not to be resentful of the fact that your friend doesn’t need a personal trainer when you require two (as well as a dietician) for instance. It is easy to fall into resentment and bitterness about the fact that you have to do loads of work in certain areas when others don’t seem to have the same problems and the same demands on their money. I think it would be a big mistake to resent the situation. For one you never know what their struggles are.

The best approach is to get on with what you know you need to do to take your life forward, pushing back the thoughts of 'Why do I have to do XYZ when Annabel doesn’t have struggles in this area'. Embrace the fact that your own life and who you are determines that in these areas you will need to work hard and spend towards the outcome you desire.

Some black women are not going to meet their 'prince' while walking down the streets of Harlem or where have you. Some of you will have to pay for a subscription online with a matchmaker for instance, which could set you back thousands of dollars. The question is, do you want it bad enough to do whatever it takes to get your dream, your desired goal. Its not about measuring your life against that of others or saying, 'If she got him going to church then why do I have to make extra efforts'.

Your dream is not cheap and neither should you be. If it takes buying resources do it! And don’t be waiting for a windfall, for sales or hoping that you may not need the resource like if you pray real hard. There are problems you could have had wrapped up last year but you were being too cheap and now two years later you are still with the problem.

Some of you might need to shell out the money for gastric band surgery. If you have researched and done your due diligence and realized it represents the most effective way for you, then why not be brave and do it, get back your life/start living instead of hoping for some other miracle and putting life on hold not to talk of damaging your health the longer you stay within an unhealthy weight range.

Sure you may sign up for a matchmaker and then subsequently meet Mr Right at the Farmer's market the next day, that still isn’t enough reason not to take out a subscription. I would still be very proud of myself for making the effort even if it worked out some other way. There is also the issue of time. Take the weight loss issue for instance, a personal trainer might get you to your goal faster (and quite possibly keep you on track as opposed to you yoyoing), which means you can get on living the life you want 6 months -1 year earlier than if you took other options. Many folk do not factor in the cost of time lost. Getting you to your goal faster can be the difference between having or loosing the opportunity to have children for instance.

Think carefully about the things you want to achieve and the resources needed and don’t delay in spending the time money and the effort. And do it Now!

Black school boys are out of hand!

I am constantly coming across black boys of school age manhandling black school girls, in such a way that if they were older, the police would be called on them! What the heck is going on. The other day a black boy knocked a fellow school girl to the ground in what started as a sort of play fight on the way home, he suddenly injected real viciousness into an innocent enough play fight. It appears the hatred of the black female is now finding root in black boys at a very young age.

I see white boys play fight with white girls all the time, twisting their arms or pulling their hair but it is never done to the point where the girl is really hurt or bruised, you can actually see how they are preventing any kind of bruising in their hold. Not so with black boys who play fight with black girls with such vehemence that it becomes something else. Maybe some of you mothers need to tell your daughters to avoid black boys outright because some demonic epidemic of black female hatred is sweeping the masses of black boys.

On another day, an idiot black man besides me on the bus, admitted that his son had told him directly that he likes punching girls (read: black girls because these are the only type of girls he will be able to get away with punching). He admitted it to a school age black girl and said it so matter of factly like it was no big deal and he didn’t even say that he countered the idiocy in anyway. In a cinema queue a few days later another black boy openly and while looking to catch my eye also professed finding pleasure in hitting women to the black girl who he had come with.

And let a black girl even tap a black boy lightly even in a playful manner, and that becomes a reason to viciously beat her down because, 'she hit me first'.

 

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Never depend on others to fight your issues for you

I used to be one of those who thought that a progressive society would immediately and naturally run to the assistance of the most vulnerable among us to secure them and do that which pure common sense dictates, to protect them. Boy was I wrong! We live in politically complicated times were 'lobby groups' can actually insist on their rights to oppress and brutalize those within their domain and these lobby 'rights' are upheld.

I have come to realize that if the vulnerable don’t stand up for themselves and recognize and articulate their situation, the powerful strong lobby desiring the status quo...well it will crush them underfoot!

As a BWE proponent, in theory I accept that we as black women are on our own but it sometimes takes real life examples to remind me again and again how bad it is.

I was watching a program called Newsnight on the BBC a couple of months ago on the subject of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Now most of you have come across the term and know a bit about it. FGM is another name for clitorectomy (the cutting off of the clitoris of females). The medical community describes FGM in types; 1-3 with 3 being the most severe form of it. FGM is correlated with but not limited to Islamic cultures though there is a lot of debate on whether it is an allowable practice by the various Islamic schools of thought.

In this Newsnight program about five-seven young Somali girls from ‘Integrate Bristol’ (you can google their website) where in one corner arguing for the government to exert pressure to safeguard tens of thousands of minority girls who continue to be in real danger of undergoing FGM despite the practice having been criminalized for years now.

A little background here:

In the UK the procedure had been criminalized for ten odd years and has resulted in not one single prosecution! An investigation by The Times Newspaper earlier this year revealed that an estimated hundred thousand British girls had undergone the procedure. In France the procedure has also been criminalized but for a shorter time, and there have been dozens of convictions because of the 'no nonsense approach' adopted by the French government, while the UK pays lip service to its duty to protect minority women, preferring to sacrifices them on the altar of ‘cultural’ sensitivity. Apparently families from other European countries are now travelling to the UK to have their daughters ‘FGMed’! Indeed the UK is seen as such a laughable soft touch and they can get away with holding FGM parties here were up to ten girls are done at once! Shocking stuff!

The discussion was so very revealing. On one side was the government minister arguing in favour of ‘more cultural sensitivity’ in approach to the issue (the same approach that had led to zero convictions and parents continually brutalizing their daughters unimpeded). She was joined by a ‘Community leader’ Somali male, throwing as many ‘politically correct’ barriers as he could muster (you know invoking the right political language, 'No stereotyping', 'racial targetting', 'racism' etc etc), to ensure that the status quo situation (which was resulting in continued brutalization of women in his community), remained intact. He kept insisting that no community under any circumstances, should be ‘targeted’ and singled out for scrutiny-even though such scrutiny could save the wellbeing of young women from his community who were having their lives blighted and suffering infertility, infection and even death from the procedure.

The young Somali girls were essentially on their own on the other side, trying to counter what essentially was an attempt to resist the change that would rescue fellow sisters and friends, even the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Equalities, (herself a Jewish woman) Lynne Featherstone was busy insisting how intrusive it would be to carry out medical examinations on young girls to deter and also ascertain that young women had not undergone FGM. Imagine that!

The young Somali girls clearly had broken rank with their communities and the politically correct culture that is currently imprisoning the UK around minority issues. I can only imagine how much pressure they must be under from their communities. I can imagine the names they will be called; sell-out, native informant, Oreo. But they sat there insisting on the minority woman’s right for protection no matter how many political correct taboos that would need to be transgressed.

I couldn’t believe that this was 21st century Britain, and that cultural sensitivity (whatever that means), was taking precedents over the real and actual lives of black and brown women. Where were all the raging voices of feminism damning the establishments for daring to submit the very wellbeing of women to statutes of cultural sensitivity? How come there wasn’t a strong contingent of feminist voices to be heard reminding the ‘community leaders’ and their enablers that women's rights and wellbeing trumps all and we have no intention of reversing hard won women’s rights for some BS sensitivity to accusations of racism?

At the end even the host of Newsnight himself was exasperated with the Under-Secretary for putting community ‘sensitivity’ before the very lives of the black women affected.
 
Black women need to know that...

The wider society sees black women as the property of 'their' men and 'their' community and think these two entities have rights over black women that need to be respected. This is something they would not even begin to think of if white women were under consideration

If black women do not come out strongly and vigorously against any form of in-house oppression they are experiencing, this is seen as them agreeing with their treatment and a cue for society to let it be. With regards to black women, society does not even consider that black women may be unable to speak out or advocate for self or might even be suffering Stockholm syndrome. The notion that minority women are so totally oppressed and coerced that they cannot even speak out and might require intervention to break the stronghold, is one which isn’t allowed for with black women.

Individual black women are required to extricate themselves from even the most harrowing of brutality and the inability to do this is seen as an endorsement of their treatment.

Many black women are forced back into oppressive situations and social milieus by the wider society and by those who invalidate her right to be free from and act independent of community. Remember that breaking rank and acting free of community is deemed as an inauthentic choice for the black woman who is supposed to be community-tied always.

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First Steps to Personal Empowerment
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Who's Zooming Who: The Sequel



Which of these?




Which of these two women do you think is the First Lady of Cote d'Ivoire?
Answer Below



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Claudine Dominique Ouattara

On her wedding day with the current president of Cote d'Ivore

Have you read the Who's Zoomin Who Part 1 ?

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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Summer's end...some reflections

As we near the end of summer, I will say that it was this year's summer, that showed that a tide may be turning in terms of black women taking up the option of finding love with all kinds of races of men. I went to a number of music festivals and to the Olympic Park and there were black women of all shapes and sizes and all ages with white men, biracial children, Asian men etc. As most of you know, the number of black women in Britain dating white men is relatively high when compared to their counterparts in the US, yet you never quite see it. You hear about it, and maybe see one or two examples as opposed to the dozens and dozens of black men with white women you see every day. Well something seems to have changed and these black women are behaving as normal as possible and this is what gives me hope.

There was a very curious case I came across at a music festival; a 'Rastafarian' white man (with his long dred locs and all), and his black wife also 'loced' down (lol!). They were a middle age couple so this was clearly no Fad. I saw them strolling along just like every other couple out there, and that’s the main point here, they like many of the other women were going about life normally, engaging in lives little activities, communicating in low tones, slight gestures just like between two normal everyday people. You know when black women are with white or non black men and they are speaking very loudly and also looking furtively around...it just tells me they are uncomfortable and they want to suggest to others that this is not an intimate situation in fact the loud talking is inviting everyone to see that there is nothing intimate going on.

I also saw young black girls with white boys (a very hard group when it comes to Interracial Dating). The message is getting out there that it is normal to be attracted to and to date white guys even from school age.

 

911 Anniversary

I rarely say much on this subject every year, if I do remember to, I sometimes put up a picture and say 'God bless America' or something of that nature. After the recent events in the middle east, I am even more inclined to not just value Western freedoms but to realize that there is no similar kind of context of personal and individual freedom offered around the globe.

As black women we talk about living the best lives possible but make no mistake, the context within which we can live optimal lives is the western context, no matter how flawed and deficient it still is. If the western edifice does not endure, then as black women, you can kiss your fancy ideas about living optimal lives goodbye. Do you know that there are places in Africa now where as a black woman you can still be sold as a slave.

 

Indeed some of you think you have a fight/quarrel with the western social order but I can assure you that if you succeed in taking down the western edifice, what will replace it will make your hair stand on end. The West is not evil. It has deficiencies, it has flaws, somethings could be better...Do your best to better the system at the same time defend your freedoms and values which are under threat. The external threats are even more than those of so called 'right wing christians' because there are already laws in place that limit what such folks can do. There are actually external factors that may well reshape some of the west's most fundamental freedoms, as it seeks to align itself with the demands and agitation and financial might of other global power players and a new world order being ushered in as we speak. 

 

I am sounding this warning, Stop trying to take down the whole Western project. Stop being used and manipulated (through your anger or guilt or bitterness) into destroying your own civilization.

Now someone made the statement the other day, that the US went to Afghanistan to install Sharia law, they did the same for Iraq, they are in the process of doing it for Libya, Egypt and Syria and the rest of the middle east. When you really think about it, they are right. Imagine that!

Lets face it, no one knows if the Arab spring was really the flowering of democracy, the signs dont point to that. What is becoming more evident is that some of the most reactionary and anti-human factions co-opted the rhetoric of democracy and self-determinism to actually forward an agenda that will actually be illiberal, anti-democratic and is threatening to crush the minorities in their midst, who even under the worst dictators managed to find a safe space within these regions to live and be.

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Sub-humans killed an Innocent Man

The Murdering of an Innocent Man
RIP Ambassador Christopher Stevens
NEVER FORGET ALWAYS REMEMBER

Always Remember, Never Forget!

God Bless America

Seek out spaces where you are Valued - Part 2

After last week's post, a commenter made me reflect on some other stuff that I had noticed at the barbecue; how black men and white men presented themselves in markedly different ways in terms of how they interracted with others. I responded to the commenter Samadhi:

That’s a good question. I think on some level they are doing the dance expected of them. I will write up a bit more on these thoughts in the next post but I was actually watching the actions of the white men at the barbecue versus the black guys. Most of the white guys performing any function were well behaved, went out of their way to be helpful and courteous, and assist people without judgement or telling anyone off. It seemed/s to me to be expected that the black guys were going to act 'some kind of way' possibly have outbursts, tell folk off, or transgress the social etiquette and rules of decorum, with people gearing up to make allowances for these expected responses. Even at work they receive patronage and the funding keeps rolling in if they fit the stereotype of the misunderstood black male, or if they play to the 'black men cant help themselves but react angrily', theme. Very sad because it keeps them in the cycle and they cant break out (because it is being rewarded)and be better than all that!

To add to this observation, as a result of work I am exposed to the dynamics of interaction between black men and women. I know a particular woman who has a black man on her team and I am struck by how she, his manager, treats him more like a son or younger brother. Whenever she asks him to take care of a piece of work she is almost up in his face imploring, meanwhile with her black female team members, she issues straight forward directives which she expects them to comply with pronto. I find her body language very revealing; when she is talking to him he is turned away while she is turned towards him almost up into his armpit.

With any other person, his kind of body posture would be deemed rude or would register as insubordination. It appears to me that there is this Caribbean cultural thing, where black women are supposed to be positioned as the pursuers of the affection, attention and the response (and good will) of black men who themselves maintain maintain an air of aloofness to all her efforts. While women adopt excessive obsequiousness, act all pleading and placating towards black men black men adopt a posture of entitlement to black women’s, indulgence, protection and extreme patience.

I find that if invited into an inner circle of black folks you are expected to actually adopt these rules and conventions for relating to black men if you are a woman and they will test that you understand and comply.

Lets talk about the good example of seeking out spaces where you are valued

Summer is music festival time. This year I attended a four day festival of world music. I haven’t camped in such a long while and my poor back complained bitterly after the first few nights. The music menu was varied and sumptuous; Turkish, Irish, Scottish, African, Japanese...you name it (the highlight for me was a Norwegian singer Ane Brun http://anebrun.com/ (absolutely sublime performance of 'Undertow' and 'What's Happening With You & Him').

On the second day I attended an Irish band session. There was no black person in the audience though quite a number could be seen at the festival itself. When the band leader called for some volunteers I put my hand up and I was selected (just as I knew I would be when he announced before hand that he would ask for audience participation). I was so sure that I discreetly put lip gloss on and secured my purse as soon as he made the announce. Why not, I was the only black person in the audience of maybe 100. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the probability of being picked was very high for me. They would definitely love to have me up there on stage trying out their Irish dance routine. I got a signed CD for my efforts!

I don’t think I need to spell out the moral of the story, there are places where your presence would be sought. I contrast this with so many 'black spaces' where black women love to frequent yet there is a pained expression on the faces of the black men when they show up! Where jokes are made about their weave, their 'attitude,' and black men are so eager to show how much they detest these black women and prefer the few white or mixed race women in their midst.

A lot of us have not tossed the idea that black spaces are best for us even though our experience tells us otherwise. At the same time so many of us will swear up and down that white folks are hostile and don’t want us in their midst and will do A, B, C. Yet we don’t know any such thing for certain, (we have heard it second hand) neither obtained it from experience because we have never yet 'integrated' any white spaces to know that such would be our fate. We are cowed and limited by the phantoms we created in our own minds about white spaces and when we enter them we sit huddled together in a conner with other black women because of our fears! We might even have experienced some discomfort or an awkward situation in white spaces but compared to our trails in black spaces these are nothing.

Do you know that off the top of my head I can list 5 places in my local area where I am sure to see one or no black woman, and thus such a venue could be used to my social even career advantage.

I am sure some people (one woman in particular), must have been peeved that I got called up over them, maybe they are Irish and love all things Irish and 'Who the hell is this interloper'. But who cares. In black spaces they would have a ball. Non-black women in particular are given premium value over regular black women even the most devoted black woman who would lay down her life for black unity. Many white and almost white women understand the game in black spaces and play it to their advantage to the very hilt and at the expense of black women, and give no apologies. Why shouldn’t black women find where they 'fit in.'


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