YOU THOUGHT I WAS STUPID RIGHT ?

For years I have had to deal with two trains of thought when working and living in a majority White world. I usually get, “He must think he’s better than us” or “This guy IS better than us.” I know this may sound arrogant and racist to post but, this has been my experience for years since I was a child. From grade school to college and into the private corporate world, I have had to endure incidents where I’ve had my intelligence (different than ideas or actions) challenged in PUBLIC. Those challenges, from my point of view, were all direct attacks to my person and my PLACE within the infrastructure that is America. As in any attack, my response was always for INTELLECTUAL BLOOD. Take no prisoners. I wanted you wounded to the point that you feared even opening your mouth around me. Mind you, I knew that doing this meant career suicide, (especially if you did this in Public with an audience of co-workers) but it was necessary for everyone to know that the next time, YOU BETTER THINK as well as RECOGNIZE.

There was a time when I was a child, I was very self-conscious about what I knew. The fact that I was a straight A student and well read and traveled. The fact that my parents made sure that education and a World View was as important as my Spirit and Love, Respect and Life would make me a strong Black Man. In my adult life I know that I am an information-holic and I don’t want to go to Rehab. (I say No! No! No!) I love learning. Anything that is new and informative I gravitate to and I like talking about it. I am not the overly loquacious type, meaning I don’t talk and talk without consciously acknowledging that whomever I am speaking to has tuned out, but I can hold my own in conversations in many situations. I know how to research and I don’t like being in a situation where I don’t KNOW. Call it a competition thing from childhood or my parents constant drilling of sending me to my room until I found the answer before coming out. And when I did I would be asked, how did I feel knowing that you are that much more smarter then yesterday?

In working environments, I often become the go-to guy for information. When there are changes and in policy I recall the old policies as well as the new ones, I know the technology in my area as well as others, I compare and improve based on the information I gather and examine the changes even more, I am proactive (which is not well liked in any working environment) and I can go on with other examples but the point I want to make is this, I have been approached by many WHITE folk and would be put on the spot about what I know or what they think I don’t know. In their PERSONAL attack, I make sure I totally CRUSHED THEIR EXPECTATIONS OF ME. Even more so, knowing the intent of their questioning, I make sure that when I am done answering, that the next time they try it, ether with me or any other Black or Brown person, they THINK TWICE. what brought up these feeling was seeing this Vid on YouTube and I was so IN TO THE BROTHER'S RESPONSES.

The interviewer was trying to dominate and change the course of the answers, trying to up and twist the answers, which was a sure sign of his intimidation and disrespect of the Black man's intelligence. This is a common strategy of the insecure and Political Pundits looking to discredit CREDIBLE people. Once these people find out that their abilities to make fun or light of a person’s credibility and their knowledge, they immediately try to become “friends” because they know their actions have been found out by a more Superior Mind. It’s a coward’s tactic, and I see it too often to allow it to brush up against me and those Black folk around me who can not defend themselves against it.

People such as Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Harry Belafonte, Cornell West, Amiri Baraka, Julian Bond just to name a few have on many occasions have been subject to this type of questioning with the interviewer ALWAYS going home limping and frustrated at being a victim of Honest and Truth reflected back at them. This is one of the reasons why media is VERY selective as to WHAT TYPE of Black people they choose to speak to and or interview. As recent at Montel Williams' dismissal from FOX TV for articulating WELL his views on the troops killed in battle in Iraq instead of talking about the death of Heath Ledger. He got the NEGRO BE BOOTED TO THE CURB for that one because He, Montel, can not possibly have a voice or even a conscious thought to articulate a sentence in the language America seared upon Black tongues or even have the capacity of logic to argue the TRUTH.

I wish I was standing next to this kid when he was being asked those questions. I know that before the Reporter turned his cameras away I would have yelled, ‘Now don’t you look stupid, you just thought he was some Monkey Shuffling, Mindless Negro without an once of education or individual conscious to VOTE his mind. You need to be smacked for your ignorance!” and I would have too. No one wants to be made a fool of and when WHITES in ignorance or in full conscious do it, THEY wake up the beast that over 400 years of Slavery in the Americas have brought, especially when you are questioning BLACKS FOLKS reasons for voting for a another BLACK MAN. To be honest, to even ask BLACK people why they are voting for a BLACK MAN FOR PRESIDENT should be in itself, an insult on so many levels.

I think the role of a Barak Obama in his bid to become President is that Whites are slowly realizing that BLACK PEOPLE are intelligent and talent, we are intellectuals and creators, pioneers and engineers and are existence is more than what America and the World assumes. But like my life experiences have shown is that once you challenge those at the TOP, the ones that are their by privileged and not merit, often find that the fight to maintain influence can be harsh and vicious unless you are prepared to join and be like MIKE.