Taking Back Martin Luther King Jr's Legacy

Every time January 18th comes around, I often wonder what kind of Black shaming articles will surface, and to what degree will they be spread throughout the internet.

Now to the majority, this will be another year where we endure the money draped gossip spread against us through a person many of us have revered.
This year is different. I am compelled to discuss how we were effective in taking back his legacy.

During the aftermath surrounding Mike Brown's shooting in Ferguson, we endured people using MLK's legacy from people trying to shame us into behaving how they thought we should behave. If a person wasn't careful in recognizing this pattern, one would believe that would have been the point of celebrating Martin Luther King's legacy to the point where white nationalists have gone so far as to buy a domain geared solely for the demonization of Martin Luther King and his legacy.  Even after the website in question had been outed as an illegitimate source, they will still take their time trying to defame him.  But not anymore. During the unrest in Ferguson,  so many people clapped back with his quote "A riot is the language of the unheard" to the point where articles like this one was created, claiming that his image has been corrupted by social media.

Even though his legacy is still undergoing attempts at being tarnished by those who are anti Black, it has become evident that people are still neglecting the reasons why he had to protest in the first place. 

This lead me to believe the same people who decry the corruption of his legacy by social media are the same ones who failed to recognize the cause of the violence in Ferguson. 

These are the same people who believe the turbulence happened out of the clear blue. These are the same people who thought everything was fine until "they" brought up race. 

These are the same people who view themselves and people who look like them as innocent and could do no wrong.  

These are the same people who glossed over the violence of White people during Martin Luther King's peaceful protests.  

Long story short, if the documented violence of the state and the violence of White people past and present didn't exist, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and many other noted Black activists would not have needed to protest because the issues would have been non existent. 

And the Ferguson unrest would have not happened because the environment there, and many other places in the United States would not have taken place. 

And that is what Martin Luther King really meant when he said that non violence would be the greatest weapon of the Negro. Because all of the violence that White people had inflicted upon them past and present would be glaringly strong. And it is strong, but many of us haven't been looking at it from a different angle due to justified anger and frustration of the whole thing.  (Please remember I'm not saying roll over and take that violence that has been given to us.I'm just saying they'll never be able to use his legacy against us again because the evidence regarding White violence is all there.)

After seeing this and making all of the pieces of the past fit with the present, I came to this conclusion:

Martin Luther King to anti Black people is like Jesus for conservative politicians. They like the idea of him, but don't actually advocate for the things he actually said or taught and would more than likely hate the actual person.

That being said, Happy Martin Luther King day. Take this time to celebrate any way you see fit. And also, please remember to financially boycott that day, and re-divert your dollars to Black owned businesses. 

And remember. Watch this video and pay special attention to what Martin Luther King says at the 3:15 mark. Aside from Martin Luther King dressing 'properly' and being non violent, this is why it won't keep you from getting arrested or murdered. I see you, RZA.

Tell Em Why You Mad.

The title of this blog is self explanatory. As you can see (assuming you haven't already), I am pissed. Off. Why, you ask?  Well, I thought things would be better by now. Older generations often speak about the so called "good ol' days," and about how all the generations after theirs are garbage, and no matter who I talk to, they all say the exact same thing. They say things like "(insert scapegoat here) is causing kids to be violent. Music these days is hypersexualised and over the top. Kids don't dress respectable anymore. TV is crap, etc..." They do this from up high, as if their generations have poop that smells like sun shine and lemon blossoms, and they couldn't have possibly done any wrong. And yet, all of this mess came from somewhere and it didn't just drop out of the sky one day and smite one generation. No one wants to really look at where all of this so called "filth" came from and how it got here.  Could it be that so called filth came from their generations and prior? Let's just take a look at some of it:

1. The youth today are so violent because of violent tv and video games.

People have been fighting for eons and centuries. The kids from prior generations played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and Army Men, etc with toy guns that their parents bought them. If the parents decided to go all out, the kid had a cap gun to simulate the actual shooting sound. They had toy tanks, and costumes complete with bandoliers. TV and radio programs depicted these games or stories that often contained violence. Before that, there were horror stories, and tall tales being told by family members. So for them to sit there and say that the kids are violent because of TV and video games is very hypocritical and shortsighted at best. They conveniently forgot that when they were kids, they were outside either acting out the violence, or talking about it whenever they had the time. Throughout several points in history regardless of the country of origin, events were marked and shaped by violence. I guess using their logic, the Civil Rights Movement was a result of some of them playing the LynchaN!gger video game series by Mattel  while growing up or something because where else would that violence have come from.  They never ever hurt anybody because they were the best and greatest generation, right?<< Get The Fuck Outta Here With That Mess.

2. The kids dress so horribly these days.(Fair warning, I don't share any sentiments mentioned against the people who wore the types of clothing mentioned, I'm just combining a lot of the crap I've heard spoken about those who wore or wear said attire.)

 Back in the day, greasers existed. Nobody really liked the greasers, and they were seen as thugs with their fast cars, greasy hair, wearing their underwear (white t-shirt) on display for everybody to see, and wearing sneakers outside of gym class.  Nobody liked the hippies, with their lack of proper support wear (bras), those guys who "look like girls" and won't cut their hair, and all that "free spirit shit" they were into, and how some of them smelled and looked like they rolled out of bed solely for the purpose of doing "whatever dope they're into at the moment." And let's not forget the punk rockers of the 80s' with their gravity defying hair all gelled up, and their raggedy clothes, how they disgraced the military uniform by wearing the camouflage pants with Chuck Taylor's, and the leather motorcycle jackets with all of the writing on them. And we have to mention the 70s with the bell bottoms, the platform shoes with the goldfish in them, the butterfly collars, the afros (Don't front, Blacks and Whites wore them ). Before all of that there was the Zoot Suit movement, and before that women were shortening their skirts, and some of them had the nerve to wear (gasp) pants! Hide your kids, hide your wife folks, all hell fina break lose because people are sagging their pants right now as I type this. <<Get The Fuck Outta Here. They can't be serious. Trends for the better or worse have come and gone. Every so often, the style gets recycled, resulting in another generations chance to wear the previous styles with a twist. They aren't hurting anybody. They may look funny, but it's just a fad regardless of what time era the kids belong to.

3. Music and television is so bad, and back in my day they had quality programming.

Here's a short list of shows from "back in the day" that depicted some questionable stuff:

The Honeymooners- (1957) This show is routinely centered around verbal abuse in a relationship. The main character would threaten his wife by saying, "One of these days, POW! Right in the kisser!", while shaking his fist at her, or "BANG, ZOOM! Straight to the moon!", This  basically means, "One of these days I'm going to punch you in the face. And I might punch you so hard you fly to the moon" < So they are encouraging domestic abuse now?!

The Three Stooges (1921)- This show was a slap stick comedy act that consisted of nothing but violence. People would get hit in the head with hammers, wood saws used on their heads, pliers used to pull someone's nose, objects thrown at each other, and a whole host of things that could be very easily emulated by children, and all done in the name of 'good fun'. I used to watch this same show when I was a kid. That means this show was displayed in various forms from 1921 until the mid 80s, and I think it's still shown to this day. < That's a lot of generations watching that show. How many kids from how many generations ended up injured because of that show?

Amos 'n' Andy- If you are reading this blog and you have read it in the past, then you may already know about this show. If not, I'll just say that it was a minstrel show that stayed popular from the 1920s to the 1950s,and was once a radio show before TV had become widely available.

There were also countless good guy vs bad guy shows on TV, a lot of them included a healthy dose of bullets flying, gun slinging, car chases, a death or two, etc. Again, this goes back to the kids imitating the shows. How many kids grew up wanting to be a policeman who caught and or shot the bad guy? How many wanted to be cowboys so they can kill  Native Americans? How many wanted to go in the armed forces for the chance to kill a "Kr@ut", "J@p", "G00k", or (insert the current 'fashionable' racial slur of the day here)?

Let's take a look at music and songs

Rock and Roll- The name for this music was also a slang term for sex, and people said the music sounded like it. Some even went as far as to call it "Devil Music" (which resurfaced during the 70s' when somebody said that if you play a rock album backwards, the artists say demonic or drug related things.

Elvis Presley- Those famous hips caused parents to lose their minds because it looked like sex to them (o_0 I don't know what kind of sex they were doing...buuut ummm okaaay), and they didn't want the television programs to show all of that gyrating. My guess they must  be some horny mofos to get that impression out of Elvis and old school Rock and roll in general, but I digress. 

Son Of A Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield<< That song is not about Jesus and going to church (shakes pointed index finger). It's about a girl losing her virginity to the preacher's son when nobody was looking. Don't believe me? Listen to it closely.

Teach Me Tonight by Dinah Washington(1950s)<< This song is not about studying or  late night cram sessions. Well, maybe not the kind that require books, but I'm sure you see where I'm coming from ...umm, wait (no pun intended).

"Jelly Roll" Morton   was a jazz pianist in the 1900s who started to get big in the 1910s. His name was slang for female genitalia. << Yes, you read that right. There was a dude who played piano in the early nineteen hundreds who went by today's stage name equivalent of "Punani" (for lack of a better word) "Morton", and he was famous!  With. That. Name.  And you know what else? He got his start by playing in brothels, and his lyrics were "questionable." 

 "Frankie and Johnny"  was a song about a man who cheated on his significant other. She heard he was with another girl, so she found him at the tavern and killed him. << Are they advocating murder? 

Ring Around The Rosie - This is a song that many kids grew up singing, and dates back to the 1700s. It's about The Plague and how everybody was dying so fast that bodies were in the streets. People had to stuff the pockets of the corpses with posies to prevent the towns from smelling so bad. << Kids have been merrily singing this song in circles for years and years, but no one has complained about the meaning of it or how it may warp young minds. London Bridge is another one of those songs. In fact, I think this may have been one of the songs that came with the Fisher Price cassette player.

I'm sure there are quite a few shows, and songs that are a bit "inappropriate," but I can't list them all because there are waaay too many to do so. I'm just wondering where did people get the idea that all of a sudden (insert every generation after them) is so messed up. I guess as long as they get home from work in time to eat dinner, slap their wives and rape her sister, all Streetcar Named Desire like, wait for their kids to come home from screwing their dates at "Look out" Point, then go out with the guys to kill some "other"s all to the soundtrack of fake laughing, while wearing their smartest threads,everything is alright.  Just be sure to grab your smoking jacket, light up a cigarette and pour yourself a glass of  fine brown liquor at the end of the day and everything will be A-Okay.<< Rest assured, now that's the stuff that'll prepare us for generations of winners. << How come nobody told them to Get the Fuck Outta Here With That Bullshit?  My hunch is that some were either too busy not giving a damn, or too busy being afraid of their elders; you know...respect and all, I guess. 

I guess God needs to be in schools (according to facebook).

I keep seeing images like this on my facebook feed:





and this:



And all I can do is wonder what's really going on in these people's heads. In 1962, prayer was taken out of schools. The word "God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. Does it mean that no one was going to prison or committing crimes back then? Does this mean that there was no bullying when prayer was in schools? Does it mean that kids were not ostracized by the teachers back then? Does it mean that everyone loved each other and no one was ever harmed ? Did adding the word "God" to the Pledge of Allegiance make a difference?  I think not. In fact, I believe school was harsher then than it is now, and a single word added to the Pledge of Allegiance is not the cause of it getting better. People say things like "But kids are having kids and they sure are rude and disrespectful now a days." Sure, all across the spectrum, kids are having kids, and the kids are really disrespectful right now. That has nothing to do with God, per se but back in the day parents used to hide their young pregnant daughters by sending them away for a while and having the baby sent to be adopted, and kids have been acting a fool for centuries.  Every older person who grew up in the 50s and 60s also grew up with some terrible kids as well. If you go further back, the earlier generations have stories to tell about crazy kids.  I grew up with some terrible ass kids also.  As a person gets older, they become out of touch with the children, and I believe images like the ones mentioned above are a great example of that.  Having God in your life will not make you a better person. I've seen people do the shadiest things then turn around, brag about being in church every Sunday, and revel in the fact that they are saved and blessed. This behavior is evident in a whole lot of people and crosses all demographics.  Thanks to God, I keep hearing about honor killings in the middle east, manifest destiny, rape,child molestation, people killing each other for believing in the "wrong" religion, and lets not forget the Salem Witch Trials, and the KKK who killed Blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants while using religion to justify their actions.  Needless to say, stop hiding behind God to justify good and bad behavior and realize that a person's actions are what matter the most regardless if they are "saved" or "blessed" enough. Get the fuck outta here with that mess.