Hunting for White Racism

Hunting for and turning over rocks to seek out evidence of white hypocrisy about race, seems to be a very popular pastime with many black women. Each day I get dozens of emails and articles in my inbox, on the topic of 'outing' whites as racist, against all their protestations. The other week, I got one saying, 'White people treat blacks different in Emergencies' or some such title. As you can see I am more or less blasé about all this and so cant even remember the title.

It might seem a bit exciting to peak into the minds of whites, to confirm what you have always thought about them: that they are a two faced group of people, ‘they smile in your face, but stab you in the back.’ However I think this preoccupation to expose whites is entirely time wasting. And here's why:

Why? Because I feel like showing a black woman with a seriously kicking body ...so sue me!

Racism is a natural response

Truth is that it is only in Western societies that we have taken very great steps towards social engineer against a normal natural impulse in all humans. Humans fear difference or fear the outsider who is marked different by their appearance.

Lets use an evolutionary model here to look at why racism is a natural response. Let’s think back to a time when racial characteristics linked closely to you being from a different continent and climatic condition (before the time of large scale and modern travel). Supposing I was taking my daily stroll down by the rift valley, just chilling, and I suddenly saw a band of foreigners who were finally revealed to have come from far afield as China. What do you think I would feel seeing these strange folk riding on horses or who knows what? I am sure most of you would say I would feel alarmed, and you are not wrong. Racial difference would mean they came from an area that is markedly physically different to the area from my locality. It would suggest that they have been subject to different climatic conditions and they have a culture that has evolved from that climatic and ecological landscape. How do I know that they don’t have a belief system that would imperil my own life and that of others who look like and act like me. If they came from a harsh and unforgiving land than it could be quite easily true that they have adopted cultural codes that match the need to survive under those situations. Maybe they don’t like to share or in their lands, darker skin meant the attack of a very wasting disease that could kill in thousands. If this were the case then I could be in serious trouble couldn’t I?

Even in a less threatening scenario, their culture would be different and might lead to a serious conflict around resources (maybe they come from an area with an abundance of water and thus treat that resource differently to how my tribe would, coming from the other point where we don’t have much of it). There are a thousand and one ways in which we could suddenly come into serious and even life threatening conflict as people who come from lands which have evolved markedly different ways of life. A shorthand way of dealing with this situation and its range of variables which could possibly prove lethal is for humans to have this instinct to respond with reservation to characteristics marking people as coming from a different climatic and thus social milieu.

Racism is a problem in all of us

If studies were done for blacks as frequently as for white, we would notice no great difference in basic responses. We are not naturally trusting of difference, we just have had to put up with it and evolved more open and cooperative ways of dealing with others out of necessity. Blacks are not the socially dominant group in Western societies so it hasn’t been a very pressing issue to analyse our attitudes in these matters. Negative reactions in blacks are also often excused away or put down to the fact that we are minorities and socially excluded as a group and so these responses are a result of the evil of racism and the racist system that surrounds us etc etc etc.

Stop wasting time fishing for and collecting articles and data on whites subliminal race aversion

These response are comon to all mankind and until the time when humans can engineer their every attribute I doubt we will be able to get rid of this response which is bedded deep in the human psyche.

I am hoping black women can wean themselves off the self justified feelings they get when they read and chase down the latest report on white racist hypocrisy.

How to do this

Consider white folk as mere human as we are human.

Consider that a reasonable focus ought to be how to avoid being at the mercy/victim of these natural human responses to difference. You will be able to control some of it, but you will not be able to save yourself from ever being a victim of such race prejudging or knee-jerk, 'unevolved' response to your racial difference. That my friend is life and what it means to be a human being vulnerable to broader realities and plain life's happenstance. Try not to get bent out of shape if it is not a serious issue. Focus on surviving, fighting back and having 'options' available to you to side step to.

Above all, pray for good fortune!

Next blog post 21st Feb
E-books now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

  

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

    



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

 

 

 

 

 

12 years a slave and other things

I am noticing more and more black women make unconventional choices.

Maybe not unconventional re the rest of the world but re black women themselves and the fact that they have largely limited their range within the wider world and the broader context. Because of our experiencing hurt and heartache at a time from the wider society, we pulled back from it, but the times of comfort within black boarders has ended and what we can observe now is that black men have been busy building links and making contacts. They are now able to convert these links and contacts and even broader goodwill for their betterment.

If a black man is not making it it is very likely because he has set himself against the wider society, deciding against education, delayed gratification or choosing to go the wrong way (bling and criminality). I say this because most black men can now rely on the liberal left to champion him as the victim of white men and white society and thus open up opportunities that are even denied black women. You even see white society frame the issue of oppression in such a skewed way that it facilitates black men's move in society and provides a stumbling block for black women.

Speaking of framing of the issue of oppression, I went to see the film '12 years a slave.'

I had some misgivings about seeing the film in part because we have talked about only supporting films that are made by men who support black women. Of course the issue of the lead actor of 12 years a slave and of course the producer (and who knows who else in the cast), being married interracially (and thus funnelling the money out and away from black women) was raised about this film. However as soon as the film was released in the UK a rash of articles appeared about it, and one of them essentially changed my mind about not seeing it.

It was an article in the Guardian written by a white female journalist acknowledging that the film had opened her eyes (or made her admit) to the role played by white women in brutalizing black women during slavery (the name of the author of the article is Hadley Freeman and you can google her article). Not only was this the first mainstream acknowledgement of this dirty little secret that keeps being 'white washed', that I had come across, she linked it to the resulting difficult relationships that continue to exist between black and white women re feminism. And the comment section warmed my heart even more because it became evident that many folk had long since given short shrift to the popular framing by feminists that white women were 'oppressed' alongside black men and women by white men during slavery, or that they had very little social power to do much more than watch the brutality meted out impotently, or that if they victimized black women, it was under instructions of the white slave master which they had no choice but to carry out. My oh my here were folk commenting (mostly white), that white women not only supported the system of slavery because they were invested in the wealth it created for them and their children, but that they participated in the brutality and even egged on their 'masters' in their vile joys, just as the film portrayed. For the first time the brutality of white women to their black female slaves was thoroughly captured on screen so much so people had begun to comment on this particular angle whereas before it would have not have been in anyway delineated.

Wow, blow me away with a feather!

So I duly bought my ticket and took my seat in a packed cinema.

I wont give anything away but I want to personally thank the director Steve McQueen for brilliantly illustrating how harrowing the whole slavery thing was for black women in particular. You cannot come away from that film feeling black women had a jolly ride as a few folk have tried to claim in recent times. You came away knowing that black women had it worse. They got it from both ends and no one watching that film will come away feeling how impossibly untenable the situation was for a black female slave.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the message we have been trying to get across. We have been trying to buy black women some sympathy, at least consideration if anything. We have been trying to shine a light on the situation for black women which has been callously overlooked or pushed to the back ground until it has fostered this notion that black women can come out of anything unscathed. With one film Steve McQueen has changed the narrative of black men suffering the worse during slavery to one where there is a dawning realization that 'Hang on, black women experienced the middle passage, the starvation, the fields picking cotton and as women their sexuality was readily and easily also exploited'! Call me a fool but I am happy for black women to get some due sympathy at some point.

And there was no 'light skin' heroine to engage the sympathies of black and white folk (because you know we cant feel no black woman's pain unless she is lightskinned). Light skinned women were so for a reason in the film (to show the link between slaves children and their masters).

God bless Steve McQueen! He dared to show white women there alongside the slave mastered brutalising with physical violence, with cruel denial of food and drink, soap, heartless disregard of the heartbreak of black mothers grieving over their lost children and maybe worse of all selling freed black women back into slavery!

He Steve McQueen is probably the only interracially partnered black man who consistently pays his dues to black women, deliberately choosing to highlight dark black women positively (in Shame the only woman Fassbender falls in love with is a black woman, the actress Nicole Behari) or tell their pains . So yeah props to Steve.

on another note this woman is 30 but looks like a darn teenager! Black don't crack for real!

 

Next blog post 7th Feb

E-books now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

  

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

    



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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halima on <...Break...>

What a wrong detour could cost

If the wrong idea takes root in your thinking it could take you off course.

For some it could be twenty years before they come back to their senses and by the time they do, they could have lost so much time and so many lifecycle-dependent opportunities could have been lost forever. No one is going to give you an entry level job at 45, you are supposed to have placed yourself at middle management in the career path of your choice by then, that's why career changes can be very difficult at certain ages except of course you bring transferable skills with you.

The wise king Solomon said 'there is time for everything'. It is important to make sure that wrong ideas, and experimental ideas that lead most but a very few to ruin don't take root in you and equally important to look around and see what others are doing and take a kind of 'bearing' check from the activities of your age cohort. Be aware of certain things you should be doing at certain times in your life even if you do decide eventually that you do not want these things. If you hope to pursue them then make sure you are attending to them when you should.

Yes it might seem boring and conventional to trace out your life path along the same lines as the rest of humanity, you may kiss your teeth at having the same mundane choices to fulfill as your mother and grandmother before, indeed there is this push in society now for people to cast off 'structure' and just float or not commit, for many though there will be lots of regrets. Often travelling in certain sections of my metropolis, I see many older gentlemen who didn't put down roots, making a nuisance of themselves accosting women, looking for the attention they should have secured earlier on in life. But many of these men felt they would be tied down or trapped to 'commit' to their girlfriends at the time. Many found it hilarious and macho to play about with their 'gals' feelings and need for commitment.  

There are too many ideas floating around in our world today that can transfix people and take them off a healthy life course. They might be in a strange place for 40 years just like the children of Israel in the wilderness, before the 'spell' is broken. You have to find a way of directing yourself aright and have some anchors to a place of sanity and commonsense, especially in this day and age where people create social theories (some just for the heck of it) and push these ideas out there for the most gullible to test it out for them.

I have argued that black women are acting at a disadvantage because there is a clear and critical component of guidance and direction that is missing for black women. Some of us are actually the first in our families to experience certain achievements or get to certain social levels therefore no one has gone before us and can show us the ropes. Parents and elders who often know less about the social terrain and how to make it work for them are in the position of guides for black women! They thus offer no insight, no principles that can form the foundation for a successful life or enable their daughters survive the hostile and predatory wider world. Often there is also the toxic dynamic where black women are structured to just be there to resource others and a specific kind of 'training' that turns black women into community mules is delivered from a young age until she becomes a person who acts against her clear interests and becomes adept at forming relationships in which she is host to parasitic others.    

Some 'pyramid selling' ideas are all around you: single parenthood, careless living and not forming attachments and commitments, putting your hope in 'big' government. These ideas will fail the bulk of those who adopt them (that's why I call them pyramid selling ideas because only a few at the peak of the pyramid who embrace these ideas will come out unscathed while most who form the base will rue the day!). 

Humanity has indeed evolved but not to the point where we can jettison tried and tested principles that have worked for past generations, no matter how far removed our lives seem . The principles of commonsense acting, thrift as a lifestyle and building healthy networks and connections will out last shiny modern day gadgetry.

Next blog post 1st Dec

E-books now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

 

 

   



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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



She who has much, more will be given

For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. Matthew 25:29

I used to have a problem with this saying from the gospels. It seemed so cruel and so unfair to me. I used to think about all those around me who didn’t have much and how that even what they had, God would cause to be taken away. That didn’t sound like God who was supposed to be caring and loving especially of the downtrodden. In fact this particular saying comes from one of Jesus famous parables; the parable of the talents and in it God (who in the story is the talent giver) sounded positively capitalist through and through in that scripture, bang smack in the center of the 1% with all his talk of giving his money to the bankers for profit. He sure wasn’t on the side of those who wanted a redistribution of wealth!

Now for those who don’t know this parable, it's the one where a man goes on a journey but gives each of his stewards varying amounts of money to trade with while he is away. On his return, the steward with the least money has done nothing with his 'talents' and throws the money in his face. The steward, receives not just a dressing down but some humiliation and punishment (you can read the whole of Matthew 29 for the full story).

Well I have somewhat grown up since feeling upset about unfair dealings, and there are two things that I have learnt about that parable.

1. The world system works to a capitalist imperative as it has done for thousands of years whether we like this reality or not. You and I have to 'make profit', show an improvement, make returns and innovate on what we have been given or we are just a waste of space.
2. The other thing is that it is you who decides whether you have more or less (which will then be taken away)! Phew that one was a revelation to me! It blew my mind when I realized that it wasn’t God or another person that determined that the person who had 1 talent had less, it was him himself who decided he had less by his actions. By not making a profit, by not trying to do something however small and meager with the money he was given, he declared himself to 'not have'. The giver of the talent clearly rated the talent he gave him and saw him capable of making returns on it! 

Folks it's all a matter of perspective. If you feel that you have nothing then you will essentially have nothing. How many of us know people who have many blessings, blessings that the rest of us are begging to have but they don’t rate their blessings and they cant even see it! I know of two people in my circle of acquaintances and friends who always complain about their plight and yet they are surrounded by blessings and good things, the rest of us would give an arm to have.

Many of us can testify that not using our talents and gifts means ultimately loosing them whether this be a musical skill or a knowledge of a computer package. If you do something with what you have however big or small, it will yield, taking you towards abundance. Never look down on the little you have. No doubt this steward was upset at being given the smallest allocation to trade with, but he could have seen it as an opportunity to be creative and innovative or even seen it as an opportunity to do the bare minimum with the money which the master was happy to accept.

Whatever you have to work with be it big or small, it is your attitude to your resource that will determine what you make of it. You might not have loads of talents and loads of money but be assured that the race has quite often gone in the favor of David (with his meager but critical attributes), than the obvious bet Goliath!

It is important that you adopt the mindset of 'I have much', no matter that you think you have little. This is because with this attitude, you put yourself on the path to getting more rather than on the path of ultimately loosing what you have. 

Next blog post 17 Nov

E-books now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

 

 

   



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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




Your Personal Race

You are in a personal race for yourself, you cant give up. You shouldn’t give up no matter what. Maintain course in the pursuit of your best life possible. Go out with a bang if it comes to it, but never stop striving never decelerate when reaching for the dream you have for life. The fear that you have run out of time or that you were just too thick to have seized your opportunities when they presented in the past, can be crippling. Trust me I know. But if you can maintain motivation for 4 days out of 7 (even if you are depressed and demotivated for the rest), you can make great strides and reverse bad fortunes.

One of the reasons why you need to remain upbeat and optimistic is that when you are optimistic and hopeful you think very creatively and think yourself out of problems and come up with great plans and strategies and one of them will eventually lift you out of your situation.

Sometimes you have the answer there in the mid of the clutter and all you need to do is have a clear mind (often first thing in the morning) to recognize what you need to do. To buttress this point I will say that I have acquired (as most people) a fair bit of clutter over the years. I was recently wondering why I couldn’t seem to unravel a certain situation and was considering blowing some hard cash on a solution despite having bought bits and pieces to tackle the same issue over and over again over the years. After having the issue running in the back of my mind for a couple of days, in a moment of clarity one early morning I realize that I had a certain implement in my possession already that would help me do what I wanted. Clear thinking is necessary in our world of information and product overload.

Upcoming File based loosely on ...

Dido

 

When you are depressed your mind closes in on itself and doesn’t see the breaches in what seems like an unscalable wall. So keep your energies up and your motivation at least for half the days in a week!

Again you might find that sometimes you just have to keep up your motivation to do boring things over and over when you cant even see the point of it anymore. Like a person who wants to play the piano will have to learn their keys, which is so boring running those scales, but guess what, the quality of their playing will be greatly enhanced when they learn and master the notes of the 12 keys.

Money? Sometimes you don’t need that much you just need creative thinking, in fact creative thinking can indeed lead you to put your unique signature on things, on your style for instance, on your make-up on how you carry out your work. Humans are here to innovate, its what separates us from the animal kingdom. After carrying out a routine for a while, humans will discover a better or more efficient way of doing it. It's this unique way of getting results that we can trade with others for financial security. Everyone has something: a process which they have evolved from its most basic formula. Look for something in your life that you have refined and added to and think about how you could make that into a product which can get you financial returns.

It could be anything and it doesn’t have to be a google glass type thing. Maybe you know how to sew skirts and have found a unique way of measuring for a good fit (I give this example because its sheer agony for me to find skirts that fit my shape and I wish I had dressmaking skills!). Maybe you can sew a skirt in an hour and you could set up your website teaching just that: 'a skirt in an hour or less'. Maybe you have happened upon a way to fill out eyebrows more realistically than pencils and powders and you could set up your own little concern selling whatever concoction and process gives you the realistic results.

Most people have skills and have unique formulas but they are just too lazy to take what they have to another level through study, self application and investing time and resources. By applying yourself to your talents and skills you will make them more unique and pick up ways and methods of being faster better and adding an edge to what you do. Just standing back from your skills leaves them languishing at an infancy level.

I firmly believe that we are all given talents so we can feed and cloth ourselves and those who lean on and develop their skills are helping themselves to a more financially secure future.

 

Next blog post 03 Nov

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

 

 

 



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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




A beautiful love story

Dear Halima, my wife and I have been reading your blog and we like it very much. My wife is a gorgeous black woman and I am a white guy. She's laughing at me for writing that. Anyway we wanted to share our brief biographical sketch with you.
 

In the 1960’s when I was a college student at a large university I broke almost every social norm and more in existence for a white, male undergraduate. I fell in love with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. She was a black, female associate professor who was eight years my senior. I was a dean’s list student, ROTC-type, poor as a church mouse but hard working.

When we met it was like a lightning bolt went through us – our attraction was irreversible. Two weeks after I kissed her the first time, I knew I wanted her as my wife. I shouldn’t have even kissed her – we both could have been killed for that in 1964 but it didn’t stop us. She took a professorship across town.

I graduated from the university, was commissioned in the Army and went to Vietnam. We got engaged. While I was in Vietnam Dr. King was assassinated and my loves house was shot up for being engaged to a white Army officer. I called her and told to leave town to go home to her parents and to tell them that we broke up so she wouldn’t be harmed. She did. I didn’t write her but sent letters for her to my Mom.

Three weeks later I was nearly killed in battle – my mother was told by the Army that I was dead – Mom had a stroke and never regained consciousness. She died while I was recovering and didn’t know it. My fiancé moved to New England and taught there finally moving to Europe to obtain a psychology doctorate. When I was finally able to go back to active duty I couldn’t find her and her family wouldn’t speak to me.

But guess what, forty years later we’ve been reunited!

Neither of us had married. We spent two plus years going over what had happened. We got married last summer. We never stopped loving one another. We don’t know how many years we have but we have each another again. I guess my reason for telling you this is to tell others, do not be afraid to love someone.

Don't let superficial reasons like race or culture stand in the way. I like my wife and I love my wife she’s my best friend ever. The great wounds of the 60's that separated us have reunited us - love has won out.

Never give up.!

 

 

Next blog post 20th  Oct

My e-books are now available on Amazon. Please click on the corresponding links below for more info.

 

First Steps to Personal Empowerment
Amazon

 

 

 

Do Black Women in Afros
Date White Guys?
Amazon

 

 

 







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