My next post will probably be the last where I link to the new blog.
On my moral contention to capital punishment. Read it here.
On my moral contention to capital punishment
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The Point of It All…
While y’all get acclimated to the new site, I’ll be publishing links to new posts here. Eventually this blog will get shut down. First post is The Point of It All. Click here to read.
New Website…
Hey y’all… I’ll be publishing soon over at my new site. Was trying to wait on my new logo but I think I’ll add it once I get it done. If you can take a moment to head over there to subscribe and/or add it to your news readers. Thanks for caring about anything that I have to write.
The new website is biggerthomas.org
***Moving soon***
Hey guys. Just a heads up. I’ll be shutting down this blog soon and moving over to a self-hosted website. Hopefully you’ll continue to read what I have to say over there. Once I’m ready to unveil the site I’ll share the url here so please subscribe and share with friends and fam. Thanks a million.
The media doesn’t care about black people
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcom X)
January 7, 2015. Two gunmen forced their way into the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, and killed 12 people. Charlie Hebdo has attracted worldwide attention for its regular depictions of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
January 9, 2015. In anticipation of presidential elections Boko Haram massacred up to 2,000 (reports now are estimated at ~200) innocent women, children and men in the northeastern Nigerian city of Boga.
Two tragedies in the span of two days and yet only one was reported around the clock by the media. Only one was actually called a terrorist attack. I wondered the same thing last week when an explosive device was detonated outside the NAACP headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO. Why did it take CNN more than 16 hours to even mention anything about it on its website? And even longer to mention it on air? That bombing wasn’t labeled a terrorist attack. Is it because no one was harmed in the bombing?
The bombing of churches, meeting places and homes of prominent Black people and/or organizations as a means of intimidation and retaliation is a decades old practice in this country. It’s rooted in hate, bigotry and terrorism. Yet what happened in Colorado Springs wasn’t labeled a terrorist attack. It wasn’t even reported.
I’m tired of the media having carte blanche to label what they want terrorism. Twelve people were killed at a newspaper and it’s a terrorist attack because the perpetrators of this crime were Brown, Muslim people. I don’t remember James Holmes being labeled a terrorist in 2012; he also murdered twelve people and injured 58 people. Also, in 2012 when 26 people (including 20 children) were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School questions were asked about the mental well-being of the killer instead of calling it a terrorist attack of great cowardice.
I can’t help but notice that the criminals in those two mass murders were White males. When mass murderers are Anglo-Saxon they are always described as lone wolves who are disturbed and needed the help that we failed to provide them. Even when the authorities do label a crime as “domestic terrorism” it’s often under reported and placed on the “back page”. When a Black man loses his job and cuts the head off of someone at his job no one questioned his mental-well being but instead it was reported that he recently converted to Islam.
What does this have to do with genocide that happened last week in Boga, Nigeria? The media narrates a story to a demographic to get ratings in order to generate advertising revenue. The general public is enamored with what happened at Charlie Hebdo because it looked like something out of a movie and people tuned in. Not too many people in this country care about what happens in “third world” countries until it actually effects what happens here (read: ebola). Its willful ignorance that allows media to tell us what is important and what is not.
This is why I’m more prone to seek out independent or international media to find out what’s going on in the world. More than likely mainstream media is slow on reporting stories that the Black community actually cares about. I found about Michael Brown’s murder through twitter and Eric Garner’s murder through tumblr. Once these mainstream media outlets check their social media accounts they’ll be late to the party in reporting what they should have been on top of in the first place. This same thing happened when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls in Chibok. The media was slow to report and once the celebrities stopped speaking about it, the media followed suit.
I’m weary of main stream media and its bias. I usually expect such shenanigans from Fox News but CNN is just as biased as well as incompetent. Even MSNBC is problematic in its own right. I don’t see this trend changing anytime soon so I will continue to get my news from independent media.
I Am Number 4
While I was home I attended an ugly Christmas sweater party at the home of a college friend. While I chatted it up with other college friends, one of them pulled out a sheet of paper that quickly became the topic of conversation for about 30 minutes. My friend is a high school teacher and she confiscated the paper from one of her students and made a copy for her enjoyment.
The paper was a list of the top 87 things that the student hated. My friend was listed at number 4. We wondered how she could possibly be listed so high. What did she do to this boy? As a point of reference George Zimmerman was listed at number 87. Other notable listings included Ebola, ISIS and Justin Beiber, which she also outranked.
This got me thinking that instead of doing a typical year-end post of things I want to change going into the new year or reflections of things about the past year I’d follow suit and talk about things that I hate. So without further adieu here is my list of things that I hate (in order)
- Corrupt, abusive police officers
- Racist people
- Pretentious people
- Seafood
- J. Edgar Hoover
- Don Lemon
- George Zimmerman
- Los Angeles Lakers
- Fox News
- Rush Limbaugh
- Kobe Bryant
- Classism
- Mayonnaise
- Nascar
- John Boehner
- Apple chargers
- The number 3
- Dallas Cowboys
- Ingrown Hairs
- Bill O’Reily
- Sitting next to obese people on airplanes
- High waist jeans
- Turbulence
- Carlos Rodgers (of Fairmont Heights HS)
- PETA
- Michael Jordan
- Wet socks
- Ratchet TV
- D’Angelo
- Yogurt
- New York Yankees
- Skinny jeans on men
- Spirit airlines
- Gambling
- Contrarians
- Rum
- Gin
- Mohawks
- Reebok
- Woodchuck
- Go-Go (Judge your mother)
- Snapbacks
- Darren Wilson
- Bill Cosby
- Planes flying near Malaysia
- New England Patriots
- Fritos
- Duke
- Neck and hand tattoos
- When I say I hate something and someone says, “Hate is a strong word”. I now how words work and what they mean. I know I hate you.
Welcome to the Haters Ball. Let me know what you hate.
Is peaceful protest the only form of acceptable protest left?
“But I join Michael’s parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully.” –Barack Obama
“We trust that those unhappy with today’s grand jury decision will make their views known in the same peaceful, constructive way.” – Bill de Blasio
“As we continue to await word on the U.S. Justice Department’s ongoing investigation, I urge all those voicing their opinions regarding the grand jury’s decision to do so peacefully…” – Jay Nixon
Since this summer when protesters responded to the militarized response in Ferguson I’ve heard a recurring theme from elected officials as well as those interviewed on television; even from people on social media. If you’re going to protest and voice your opinion, do so peacefully. There is nothing wrong with seeking peace in an otherwise potential volatile situation but I can’t help but wonder why the pleas of peaceful responses seem to be placed upon the backs of people who are already tired from bearing the burden of morality.
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. Psalm 34:14 (KJV)
Not that anyone would need my blessing but I don’t condone violence and destruction but I do understand the motivation behind it. Compassion and being peaceful has gotten people of color nowhere besides more of our dead bodies, faux apologies and/or explanations and police officers who get to live their lives. Are police officers that murder black people being peaceful? Where is the peace when a man can lay on the ground screaming “I can’t breathe” while the life is being choked out of him? Is it peaceful to pump bullet after bullet into a young man while there is no clear and imminent danger to you?
The onus of keeping the peace should be with those who are paid to and have been sworn to do so. Instead the community is asked to rise above the prejudice and look past the bias that they face daily. It’s frustrating to see that the value of our lives means so little so yes I understand the frustration and the anger that leads to burning down a building or flipping over a car whether its in your own neighborhood or not.
When no one hears our peaceful protests, when no one pays attention to our cries maybe they’ll recognize what they respect. They’ve already shown us what they respect. This is a country that was built on violence and protest. America wasn’t founded on nonviolence; that’s something some of us (black and white) progressed towards while trying to achieve basic civil rights.
“Don’t give them a reason to think we’re animals.”
“They’ll have reason to think that what happened was justified.”
If a person thinks that the residuum to these grand jury decisions is a reflection on our people then at best they didn’t think highly of us to begin with. Those types of people will never understand who we are, what we go through and any reaction that we might have to us being legally murdered on our streets day in and day out. There is no point in trying to convince those people of our humanity or for our place at the table.
The night that the news broke that there would be no indictment of Darren Wilson in the murder of Mike Brown, The Raphael House of Portland, a domestic violence prevention and intervention agency, posted an excerpt of MLK’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail that I thought was pertinent to what I was seeing on my television and the criticism of it.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
As I read that excerpt I pondered why people were wondering why buildings were burning in Ferguson instead of wondering why people feel they have no choice but to burn shit down?
slow tongue, fast orgasm
“Baby, city sleeping there’s nothing moving except you and me.
Silence, long caresses I’m tortured deep inside to the edge of ecstasy.
Slow tongue working your way down
Slow tongue working your way down
Frantic, racing heartbeats not a love fold left unexplored
Juicy, lubricating you bring me to the rim I can’t take it anymore
Slow tongue working your way down
Slow tongue working your way down
And finally, you excite me you decide to let go
Together we explode
Slow tongue working your way down
Slow tongue working your way down”
This is a part of the lyrics to Millie Jackson’s 1983 hit song Slow Tongue. Millie will always hold a place in my musical heart because she kept it so real on wax. While most people know her for If Loving You Is Wrong, I love her for songs like The Rap and Ugly Men. Whether it’s explaining why ugly men fuck her better or not being able to fuck that married man on demand Millie just doesn’t give a shit. What makes this more impressive is that she was born in 1944 and released twenty-seven albums between 1972-2001 with the majority in the 70s and 80s. This was hardly a time when sexual freedom by women was applauded or even tolerated.
Women rappers in my generation, who freely express sexuality in their lyrics, like Lil Kim, Trina and Nicki Minaj, aren’t pioneers. Singers like Millie and Minnie Ripperton did it first and quite frankly did it better. This post isn’t meant to be a history lesson in female sex positive music but a breakdown to the lyrics above. So let’s get into it…
This song is plainly and simply about eating pussy.
It’s as American as baseball and apple pie. Women love to have it done and we love doing it. If you get a chance listen to the end of the track and how she has an orgasm in the studio. You won’t be disappointed.
…city sleeping there’s nothing moving except you and me…
Stealing moments in time when I can imagine there’s no one else that matters except her and the mission at hand.
…Silence…
Not a word needs to be said. The look in my eyes says it all.
… Slow tongue working your way down…
Never going to dive right in and eat the main course. I have to prepare for my meal. Good things come to those who wait. Pre dinner cocktails, an appetizer, salad. By the time the main course is served she’s going to be bursting with anticipation.
…not a love fold left unexplored…
Labia minora and majora, clitoris, perineum and anus* meet the tip and broad of my tongue. I plan on being Magellan and letting my tongue circumnavigate your everything.
… Together we explode…
Was I so turned from turning you on that we both….
—-
*Judge your mother.
Progressivism doesn’t necessarily equate integrity
Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Based on this definition of liberalism most people think that it equates to being a good person. Progressives as well as conservatives say that they are for equality but any person with sense knows that most conservatives aren’t about true equality. The idea that conservatism is about preserving the old guard isn’t groundbreaking. I’d rather spend this time trying to debunk the idea that progressives are some gaggle of do-gooders.
Example. Bill Maher is touted as a progressive’s progressive. He uses comedy to make occasional excellent points. Who doesn’t enjoy someone who’s perceivably intelligent using the power of laughter to point out societal flaws? This doesn’t mean that I agree with every one of his opinions. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Rand Paul has had to say in the past few months even though he’s about as conservative as they come. I find it odd that if one person labels themselves as a progressive and the other as a conservative, the former is perceived as better than the other.
My issue with progressives like Maher is how they are labeled. It’s possible to be overall progressive but also be intolerant about certain issues. Maher, I believe is progressive as far as race issues, women’s rights, etc. but he is bigoted when it comes to religion; Islam in particular. He throws jabs at Islam but hides behind his atheism when it is brought up that he favors one religion over another. He’s gone on record stating that he thinks that Islam, “with its propensity towards violence, is a religion not like others”. I believe he is an intelligent man so I’m befuddled that he can overlook violence in the name of other religions; Christianity in particular. It’s as if he’s never heard of the Crusades or that non-Muslims carried out 90% of terrorists acts on U.S. soil.
This is not just limited to Bill Maher or even individuals. A progressive city like Portland, the city in which I currently reside, is a historically blue state with a new minimum wage of almost $10. On November 4th many expect Measure 91 to pass which would legalize recreational marijuana for anyone over 21 years of age. Oregon also has the Right to Die with Dignity Act which has caused controversy as of late. Oregon is one of thirty-two states to legalize marriage equality. It was named by the Washington Post as the best state to live in if you want to avoid corruption.
By most measures if you are progressive you would love to live here. That is unless you’re Black. The Black/African American population of Portland is 6% which soars above the state’s populace of the same demographic (2%). This low number of Black residents isn’t by accident.
“…In 1844, pre-state Oregon declared slavery illegal. But making slavery against the law and embracing a diverse society are two different items, and from its beginnings Oregon was modeled as a white homeland. That same 1844 law ordered all black people out of the Oregon Territory under threat of lashing. This “Lash Law” mandated black people be publicly flogged every six months; however, before it could be enforced, it was modified and the whippings were replaced with forced labor.
In 1849 another law excluded any more blacks from settling in the territory. The passing of the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, granted free land to Whites only. The 1859 constitution included in its Bill of Rights a racial exclusion clause banning black people from immigrating to Oregon, as well as prohibiting them from owning land and entering into contracts.” 1
There are still people who believe things like this today. Miscegenation is accepted amongst some progressives but equal rights for marriage are not accepted among others. There are some liberals who believe that women should get equal pay for equal work but don’t believe that a woman should have full control over her body. This labeling of progressivism and liberalism is problematic to me. No one person leans all the way left or all the way right. No one has completely conservative or liberal beliefs.
Happiness is a warm gun.
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
― Robert Frost
I like this quote about happiness.
It also happens to describe my precarious relationship with a feeling that used to come so easy to me. I’ve come to realize that happiness is as fleeting an emotion as anger or anticipation or disgust. As a child and young adult I thought that happiness was something of a right because it came so naturally. I deserved it. There are so many pictures of me as a child caught mid laughter. I still smile in pictures but this is sometimes done by trained reaction not genuine joy. Happiness, now is a like a rollercoaster. There few large climaxes with little ups and downs that sustains me until the next large climax.
I’ve often asked myself, “Do other people have these same fixations on happiness?” Do they fret over it as much as I do or do they just enjoy life and take it as it comes?
In my last post I wrote about how I feel I suffer from depression. While I don’t think depression and happiness (or lack thereof) go hand in hand; I do believe that they are intimately connected. It might be commonplace that a person who seems happy on the surface may in fact be putting on a front for the world around them. It’s so simple to post snippets of your life on social media while collecting Instagram likes, Facebook shares and Twitter retweets while feeling dead on the inside.
As a real adult, not a pretend one, I learned that no one promised me joy and happiness. I have the right to pursue that happiness but it is indeed a privilege that should be enjoyed while it lasts. Now the tough part is actually doing just that instead of typing it.
The Native Son 