Black Gelcap

2009-02-01T12:03:00.001-08:00

"Terrorist fist jab" to Serious Hampton

The Real Matrix

2009-02-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

Black vs. black

2009-01-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

by Malcolm G. Turner

black is the color of night;
the darkness escaping the reach of light.
black is the pit from pole to pole,
but Black, my brother, is in the soul.

black is the earth's rich soil
from Gaia springs life and endless toil.
black is the pigment that sets us apart,
but Black, my sister, is in the heart.

black is the shade of Original Man,
Adam, eve, and the Creator of man.
black is the color of infinity and time before time.
but Black, my people, is a state of mind.

MLK Was a Revolutionary

2009-01-18T20:18:00.000-08:00

Equality in a society based on one group dominating all others is a revolutionary concept. MLK was a revolutionary.

Don't get it twisted, despite the watered-down, docile version of the man they show you on TV and in tributes around this time of year MLK was really a revolutionary. The reason he's not with us today is because those revolutionary tendencies were showing through with more force with regard to the war in Vietnam and the economic empowerment of poor people in this nation. He was truly a dangerous Negro, a Black man that defied that status quo and couldn't be controlled like some of his contemporaries that are still with us today.
The media likes to portray this religious-based, non-violent movement lead by the Civil Rights leaders of the day, but they don't tell you the true ramifications of MLK's movement and how dangerous it really was to the white businessmen that controlled (and still control) this country. Why was this non-violent movement so powerful? Why were sit-ins so effective? Non-violence may have been justified with scriptures from the Bible, but there were actually very practical reasons for this strategy:

1) We were in no position to go up against the government's military might. Don't fight a battle you can't win. Not resorting to violence gave us the moral advantage which is effective in getting PR and support from possible domestic and international allies. In a supposedly Christian nation "under God," it's hard not to see something wrong with armed men physically abusing unarmed women and children. It also showed how dishonorable and cowardly the police were, which is an embarrassment to national pride.

2) Sit-ins were more than just a mere annoyance for white business owners. It messed with their cash flow, and we know how these people get when you mess with their money. The reason these tactics don't work anymore is because they're old and played out and the leaders that use them either don't know the purpose behind them or don't really care. You have to find new and more disruptive ways to make a negative financial impact against these racist companies that are alive and well today in 2009. For example, go into a bank and fill up the lines with people opening up and closing bank account with the minimum deposit. Open an account with $25 at 9:00, make small deposits/withdrawals at the counter every 30 minutes or so, and repeat step 2 every day for as long as the protest lasts. Then at the end, close the account. Or send a ton of people to a store to buy the cheapest thing they have and return it. Anything to prevent real customers from patronizing the business for long periods of time is effective.

See Dr. King was only getting started with achieving political/civil rights. When they killed him he was starting to focus more on economic empowerment and building international alliances with other poor brown countries (because that's what Black America is in essence, having never really been accepted into the general population). The American intelligence agencies know how powerful a unified Black population is especially when they flex their economic muscles and they believe this could pose a national security risk (i.e. COINTELPRO). Any Black man that was capable leading this unified population was bought, coerced into submission, or killed. Like Nas said, "No revolutionary gets old, or so I'm told. You're left full of bullet holes when you tell the people go free."

On this day of remembrance for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let us honor his name by remembering the man depicted by the mainstream media, but also the man they don't show you; the one you have to read about on your own. Honor him by reading and learning why he was so dangerous that they decided to prematurely end his life. Learn, and teach the children, about the life of a revolutionary; not some socially acceptable, passive shadow of the man he really was.

Black Professionals Aren't Recession Proof

2009-01-15T17:08:00.000-08:00

by Malcolm G. Turner
blackgelcap.blogspot.com

There's a dark side of affirmative action that rears its ugly head during a recession. Despite being more educated than our peers, well-spoken, non-threatening, generally good Negroes, Black folks tend to take the brunt of the damage during recessions all the way from the janitors to the managers. The companies that are forced to comply with these equal opportunity standards are presented with the perfect opportunity to get a little vengeance during recessions when its easier to provide justification for firing large amounts of Black folk. How can they get away with this you ask? A Wall Street Journal quote from the 1990-91 recession sums it up nicely, "Affirmative action has gotten so diluted that companies can trade one minority against the other." During that recession Blacks were laid off at rates disproportionately higher than their white, Asian, and Hispanic counterparts. By allowing ourselves to be grouped in with all minorities we have essentially forfeited our unique status as unwilling immigrants and senior claim to the debt owed to us from our free labor, military service, American apartheid, and taxation without representation.

Let's put it this way. Black people for the past couple decades have been individually selfish and collectively generous. It's time to switch that around and start thinking as a nation within a nation. We fight four our collective rights and claims on the government and immediately share them with all so-called minorities (even white women). While quite noble, this is economic suicide. I'm not saying there are deliberate, high-level conspiracies to fire more Afrikan Americans during a recession, but there are micro-level decisions influenced consciously or sub-consciously by racism specifically against Blacks more than other minorities that add up to large numbers of us being "right sized." But we'll see what the numbers say a couple years after this recession is over.

Meanwhile we're so busy celebrating one Afrikan American man that broke the ultimate barrier we have yet to discuss the inevitable backlash from white racists that have the ability significantly affect our employment numbers (not mention our physical safety). You're Black professionals right? So you know about re-orgs. It's time to re-organize the YBP ranks and come up with a new corporate strategy. Some of us can remain as emissaries in these white corporations so they are reminded of our humanity on a daily basis and to make sure they don't get too crazy with the discrimination and whatnot. But a gang of us need to get off the plantation. Why not just buy these companies that we complain about being racist all the time? Why not focus on ownership instead of employment; wealth instead of income? The car companies need money...well, Black folks in America spend a trillion dollars a year, mostly on stuff we don't need that benefits other racial groups. We can afford a few billion to buy up some of these distressed companies.

I have a proposition. To make it easier, I'll split YBP's up into two categories: Toby and Kunta. Both are slaves obviously since they both work for white masters, but there are subtle differences. When Toby talks about his company he says "we" because he truly believes that his fate is that of his master and when his master is sick, he's sick. On the other hand, Kunta says "they" or the name of the company because he's just using the company for a paycheck until he can find the opportunity to run away. The higher your salary the more likely you are to be a Toby almost by definition. Kunta just can't spend every day for 10 years around these MF's he can't stand.

So my proposition is for the Kuntas out there. I have two tasks for you. 1) By yourself or with a group of trusted, business-minded colleagues, write a business plan or two. One of them can be a business you'd start from scratch, but the other, more important one, should focus on buying an existing business. You don't have to actually start the business(es) yet, just get yourself in the mindset of thinking about other options. 2) Research Black-owned companies you wouldn't mind working for that actually make it a point to have a majority Black employment base.

At the end of they day capitalism is characterized by a competition for assets and resources in the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately, mankind has not evolved to the state where we do not separate ourselves based on ethnicity. Every other ethnicity operates as an economic cooperative with preference given to fellow ethnic members. Whereas we're still stuck in this mode of trying to crash everyone else's party instead of getting together and controlling our own economic destiny. If there has ever been a time for an agenda of self-determination within the Afrikan community it's now while assets are cheap and governments are too weak to fight back with full force. Ethnocentricity is not necessarily a bad thing; it's time we start practicing it in economically productive ways.

Finally, I'm currently enslaved on the plantation with a side hustle for extra income, but if anyone is thinking about starting a Black-owned and operated private equity company to take advantage of these low asset prices while providing jobs and building wealth in the Black community holler at me. I might have a few good recruits for you.

Hotep

Who Exactly is a Jew - Dr. John H. Clarke

2009-01-14T14:47:00.000-08:00

Dr. John H. Clarke on Islam (9 parts)

2009-01-14T14:30:00.001-08:00

Blueprint for Black Power excerpts (chapter 2)

2008-12-31T13:19:00.000-08:00

Please purchase this book from your local Black-owned bookstore or http://lushenabks.com/

pg 28

These power resources include property, organization, race consciousness, and ideology. We do not include state politics in our discussion at this juncture because in the context of contemporary Afrikan American social, political, and economic culture and the more basic issues it must resolve, state politics is of secondary importance to the Black community. Black politics and activism without the Black ownership of and control over primary forms and bases of power such as property, wealth, organization, etc., is the recipe for Black political and non-political powerlessness. The rather obtuse pursuit of political office and the ballot box as primary sources of power by the Black community and its politicians without its concomitant ownership of and control over important resources, has actually hindered the development of real Black power in America.

...The community’s concern with the election and appointment of Black political figures helps it to maintain false hopes that their attainment of office will significantly resolve its problems. The activities of Black politicians, given the current inadequacy of social organization and economic resources, harmfully distract the Black community’s attention from recognizing and eradicating the true causes of its problems and the remediation of its powerlessness.

We shall presently look at ethnic groups whose economic, educational, social, and political progress in America have been phenomenal and often surpasses that of Black Americans, yet, who have not acquired one elected or appointed official to high political office. We will see that it has been and is their effective acquisition and application of more fundamental power values or resources which are far more responsible for their progress and power than their political-electoral activism or lack of it.

pg 43

Most often the institutional or social chain of command is not perceived by those subject to it as coercive and as an expression of dominance by a particular scoial class for which the command structure is designed to undemocratically benefit. The chain of command or class structure is generally perceived by those who benefit from it the least, or who are oppressed by it, as functionally necessary. In this instance, compliant behavior, even when such behavior perpetuates gross inequities, is seen as morally compelling...

pg 48

The history of group economic relations in racist America demonstrates quite clearly that the "ideologies of ethnicity" - ideologies regarding group identity and interests, intergroup roles, relations and positions - have been and are key factors in streggules for group survival, advantage, defense, equity, achievement and sepremacy.

pg 51

Well-organized socially coherent and cohesive nation-states provide the best means for the accumulation and exercise of collective power resources. To the degree that a social group can approach nation-state status, even on an informal, non-declared level, it can create, accumulate, and maximally utilize its collective resources as media of its social power and will. The failure of the Afrikan American community to exercise considerable economic and political power despite its large population and broad national expanse as well as ample human and material resources, is directly linked to its failure to conceive of itself as a nation within a larger White American-dominated nation and to organize itself as such. Consequently it is dominated and exploited by White America and is economically monopolized and exploited by Whites, Asians, Arabs and any other ethnic group that possess a modicum of social solidarity and organization.

2008-12-13T19:19:00.001-08:00

2008-12-13T09:11:00.001-08:00

Committed to self-defeating dogma; Dedicated Ignorance 1/

2008-12-12T21:29:00.001-08:00

Dead Prez - They School

2008-12-11T07:12:00.000-08:00

Blueprint for Black Power excerpts (chapter 1)

2008-12-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

Please purchase this book from your local Black-owned bookstore or http://lushenabks.com/

from page 10-11, Blueprint for Black Power by Dr. Amos N. Wilson:

However, at this juncture we should note that current forms of domination of Continental, Caribbean, North, Central and South American Afrikans, respectively, by Europeans, is secured by more subtle and efficient means of political control than by the use of oppressive physical force. Consequently, the "independence" of Afrikan countries and former Caribbean colonies and the social "assimilation" of Afrikan Americans into the mainstream of White America by no means represent the lessening of European and Euro-American domination of or a fundamental change in the nature of European and Afrikan power relations in favor of the Afrikans, as persons so erroneaously assume. Quite to the contrary, these historically apparent social/political changes instead represent the increased subtlety and efficiency of European domination of Afrikan peoples. It should be noted that the ability to use physical/militaristic force as the final arbiter of power relations still lies overwhelmingly in the hands of Europeans and Euro-Americans. It is this "force" differential that Afrikans across the Diaspora must in some way resolve, neutralize or frustrate if they are to gain true parity with Europeans and Euro-Americans and indeed gain their liberation from European domination.

pg. 13

The often anemic self-concept of subordinate persons and groups, their low self-esteem, their ignorance of their actual strengths, are more the causes of their subordination that is the actual strenth of their oppressors.

pg. 19

Rules, beliefs and consent are manufactured by those in power to justify, lefitimate and serve their interests. In its origins White American power was not legitimated (i.e. voluntarily or contractually consented to, morally justified or politically-socially ratified) by Afrikan Americans who at the time of its origination were held in captivity (slavery) and to this point in time have been largely excluded from signficantly participating in American legitimation processes.

From the historical point of view of Native and Afrikan Americans, White power, in whatever form, is illegitimate. This is because such power rests essentially on the near physical and genocidal decimation of Native Americans, the theft of their properties, on the exploitation or the forced labor (enslavement) of Afrikans, and on the systematic exclusion by Whites of both Black and Native Americans from the influential exercise of practically all forms of "legitimate" power and authority in the United States. The rules and beliefs which provide the means for legitimating White power were in fact pre-established, pre-ordained and imposed on Blacks against their will by Whites from the beginning. The illegitimacy of White American power is founded on the illegitimacy of its original sins - genocide, theft of property, and eslavement.

pg. 22

Even if the American political-economic system is now "colorblind" or race-neutral, which most assuredly it is not, this counter-factual sitation occurred after almost three and a half centuries of White racial prejudice toward and oppression of Blacks. It was during this long period that Whites developed and accumulated the collective cultural, social, political, familial, and individual capital that their domination of Blacks afforded. These accumulated advantages are used by Whites, even in a race-neutral egalitarian society, to provide themselves with further huge advantages compared to Blacks who have suffered three and a half centuries of accumulated disadvantages. A contemporary race-neutral society, in terms of its neutrality alone, would in no way resolve the problem of gross inequities between Whites and Blacks. In fact, such a society would function only to maintain, if not in actuality enhance them. Blacks must develop means of overcoming White sociopolitical and socioeconomic advantages regardless of the racial status quo.

pg. 23

...manipulation may involve the most dehumanized, and as far as we are concerned, perhaps the most dehumanizing exercise of power of all because, unlike the exercise of obstructive physical force, visible coercive and authoritarian power where the intent of his adversaries and the sources of assault and frustration are known to the subject, manipulation "is a form of power that cannot be openly resisted by the power subject since he is unaware of the powerholder's intent or even sometimes of his existence. There is no visible command for him to disobey, no identifiable adversary against whom to assert his freedom."

The manipulation of Afrikan American political and economic attitudes by the White ruling elite is designed to effectively secure, enhance and exercise power while not appearing to do so; while appearing to provide Blacks with power or options equal to that or those of Whites. The point of this type of manipulation is to win the acceptance by Blacks of the legitimacy of White power, its moral integrity, its legitimating ideology, and the acceptance by Blacks of their obligation to obey the directive of White power while believing their obedience to be expressive of their own free and moral will. Only by basing their behavioral orientation on their own Afrikan history, culture, values, interests, consciousness and identity can Blacks prevent their behavioral manipulation by self-serving Whites and act under the influence of their own self-generated enhanced power.

pg. 24

"...the determining feature of race relations is not prejudice toward blacks, but rather the superior position of whites and the institutions - ideological as well as structural - which maintain it." - David T. Wellman, Portrait of White Racism

To be continued...or just go buy the book and read for yourself.

Malcolm X: Make It Plain (14 parts)

2008-12-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome

2008-12-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

I think Morpheus from The Matrix can help me explain what this blog is about:

Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life; that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there like a splinter in your mind...driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about? The Matrix. Do you want to know what it is?

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work; when you go to church; when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth...that you are a slave. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the [white] pill, the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the [Black] pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Remember, all I'm offering is the truth...nothing more.

Now, read the quote again, but replace "The Matrix" with racism or white supremacy. This blog is meant to be the Black pill to help equip you with the knowledge (mental medicine) to critically examine the system in which you live...a path on the road to an Afrikan-centered consciousness. This is not about putting other people down. It's about elevating Afrikans all over the world, acknowledging our history, and taking steps to achieve self-awareness, self-respect, self-determination.