TIME TRAVEL with Dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr.

The mind is fragile. I work with it all the time. As a standard practice I try to check my thoughts as much as I can and I surround myself with people who will check my actions and words as well. My Momma told me when I was young that if ever I get in trouble, it would be because of my mouth. It was funny back in the day when my mouth would say something before my brain realized but as an ADULT, I now have the power to bring down PRESIDENTS or start WARS so its not so cute anymore. So not only as an adult but in this new-age a FEAR, there is a fine line between "keeping it REAL and keeping ALIVE. So it's not unusual that I’d be out and about and go off on a rant with no common sense and I hear, “HEY, you going there” by friends which would snap back into reality. I think as Black people we need a little checking because we do know we can all GO THERE. The problem is that when we do, and there is no CHECKER or LIFELINE to bring us back, we go all the way into a place where there is often, no return. This characterizes and stunts our SPIRITUAL FEAR because that "THERE" is also our ownership of our reality, the midpoint of one’s responsibility and possibly the one thing that defines your existence. Is being checked always a bad thing? That’s hard to say since we do not have the ability to foresee the future, but we can see into the past.

We fantasize about going back through time, the power of knowing what you know and going back in time to re-do or even drop knowledge to those close to you. A question like this you can find popping up at dinner conversations or job interviews. They look like fun games to play but it’s really a very dangerous thing to do. The mythos of time travel being dangerous is true because it cannot only open up the good in MAN but it can open up a DARKNESS as well. I’m not talking about Armageddon-type stuff, what I am talking about are the emotions that spill out of looking backwards into places sacred.

I like history. I've loved it since I was a child, throughout high-school (yes I was a nerd), college and I use to teach it during my post-graduate commitment to Urban schools. World Cultures, Western Civilization, Northern Africa and Middle-Eastern Studies, Russian History, US History and African-America History all were part of my teaching regiment and vocation for my students. The more I got into it on the teaching side, the more my Worldview changed and expanded and it wasn’t from appreciation. Once you look into what mankind has done to itself, the way Man’s very nature towards itself and others, you begin to have an underlining anger at the ignorance, fear, horror, exploitation, destruction, waste and manipulation we harbor. Then there is the trust factor. Since history is the rule of patterns and circular events, for the most part, the POWERS THAT BE come calling with the same “banter and bane” and as a historian you can smell them coming.

On the day we appreciate Martin Luther King Jr. I took a trip back through time. Looking back at a lifetime of King streets and boulevards, centers and squares, elementary and high-schools, the speeches and documentaries, books and theories, the audacity of past employers explaining to me why I have to take a PERSONAL DAY to celebrate the KING'S NATIONAL HOLIDAY and then I looked outside of my window watching some man yelling at a woman about her use of twenty dollars to buy groceries (they had to be on drugs or something because no one normal argues about buying food for the house). I think back at King’s beginnings, his original ambition and how it evolved into a reluctant Civil Rights Leader, how he was the center of the Sun, the hottest part and out from that energy he lit all others within his shine. I looked at how once that sun implored, many of those dreams and shared ambitions fell in upon itself into something less radiant yet just bright enought to still see the road to be traveled. Still there is the Hope but not as HOT or as BRIGHT.

We know who those people are today, we know those that continued the movement and still we continue to look back at the glory days as a reminder of what use to be, what can be, should be, and if we have the ability, to ask WHAT IS?

If you are a time traveler, your answer is No. If you were there at the point of origin you should either me MAD AS HELL or just MAD CRAZY. My friends and associates can never watch historical shows highlighting Black struggles. They often reply, “It makes me mad and makes me want to hurt some White people.” And so they avoid those feeling by avoiding their history. So who is really safe? Who benefits?

That’s the power and the flaw with TIME TRAVEL; you have to be careful where you go and what you really want to see and know. In all the Sci-fi stories on Time Travel, there is always that fear that to do it, and possibly "change" something, it would cause "catastrophic" events to mankind and possibly the UNIVERSE. The theory is the “Butterfly Effect”. But I think it goes deeper than that. I mean, if you physically had the ability to go back, would you just want to see or would you become an active participant? Now take that same theory but place it on a mental level, if you can mentally go back in time (history), would you just want to observe or would you want to be an active participant and "change" it? Fix it? Make it right?

Regardless of the effects, the change would in essence remove POWER for those that covet it and redistribute it to others (sounds like a REVOLUTION to me). The end result might destroy Man, Country or even the way we praise our Higher Power but the arrogance that it will destroy the universe or even GOD? ... HELLO PUT ME IN THE TIME BUBBLE, I'm going back to Carthage and chillin' with Hannibal.

Carl Sagan, the famous Astrophysicist and Astronomer once said. " I have mixed feelings. The explorer and experimentalist in me would very much like it to be possible. But the idea that going into the past could wipe ME out so that I would have never lived is somewhat disquieting."

OK so you know, I am talking about Knowledge and Memory and not wiping out the Human Race but it's all the same and relevant. Are we really just here acknowledging just the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. or do we Time Travel back and relive his existence. I was not born when King was alive but his intense ambition lives within me, my only frustration is, there are few that can brave enough to Time Travel with me to take on the fire hoes, the marching, the boycotts, the sit-ins, the real closed dialogue and the demands of being a Martin Luther King Jr.

Soulja Boy Pissin Off A Balcony

This is why it's important to practice an "Each One Teach One" philosophy in our communities, Soulja-Boy. The more I keep on top of what today's youth read or (or as teenagers and teenager wannabe's say) generation write and listen to (and that's almost laughable since kids are reading less and watching TV), we need to intervene with a sense of pro-active consciousness and responsibility. Now that TI is on a PATH TO PRISON, the new assault on youth behavior are in the actions of people like AKON, SEAN COMBS (ain't he almost 40?) and Soulja-Boy. Certain actions might look like fun and comedic but there lies actions that cross the line of inappropriateness and illegality.

Just the other day I was talking to an associate of mine whom I hadn't seen in a few years. We were discussing how the neighborhood had and is changing and why Whites, through gentrification and the politics behind it, were moving People of Color out especially since the kids on the street just don't care or respect enough to join in the fight their community. Within minutes, and I swear, as if on cue, I was in a Boondocks episode when a young Black kid no more than 16, walked down the street pissing straight out in front of himself, penis whipped out, just striding down the street talking on his cell phone as people and children approached in the opposite direction. There, just leaving a trail of urine as he sauntered to his destination. He had no care, no conscious, no modesty, no respect. JUST NASTY.

THAT'S NOT HIP-HOP NOR RAP OR EVEN BLACK

But, here I am working on a writing assignment when I get a piece of video from a writing buddy on Soulja-Boy and I am smacked in my Common Sense again. Yet another example of how not to represent ones power, influence or roll to model for our youth. Watch the Video first before continuing:

I DIVERT MY THOUGHTS FOR A SECOND

After watching a recent episode on The Boondocks (The Story of Thugnificent) where the show's premise was an infamous rapper "Thugnificent" moves to the neighborhood of Woodcrest, with his friend Macktastic and Flonominal, eventually leading to Granddad becoming annoyed with his new neighbours. Your basic older generation conflict of image control and respect vs the Niggaism of youth and just not giving a damn. After watching this episode, I took a second to examine if I was coming off too hard on Black youth because I am now moving into the point in my life where I am becoming my parents and envying my loss of youth. Then I later watched a program on PBS where teachers had gone into the slums of India and rescued children of prostitutes and sent them to school. All the while these children are learning, they are aspiring to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and business owners so they can come to America and become something greater than the children of the streets. There was common sense, a drive and a chance to capitalize on opportunity in each of them and that was when I said, FUCK NO !!! Regardless of their assistance, the help, the possible MOST FAVORITE IMMIGRANT STATUS, they would still have to put in the work to become what their goals are. With the amount of resources we have in the US; libraries, mentors, apprenticeships, community advocates, churches, libraries, sports and music programs (and I am not referring to Government Sponsored Programs), and even in the poorest academic settings, there are still outlets for additional resources if you actively seek them out, I can only say that our youth are just lazy, embarrassing ignorant and it's by choice.

Don't Call Me Uppity !!!

How I was raised worked out well for me. Now I know to some that might sound 'Uppity' but hear me out on this. I did not come from a fatherless family with a prostitute mother, my upbringing was not an easy story to read nor one traveled. My parents were not wealthy or anywhere close to wealthy. I wore all the stereotypical ghetto attribute labels but the one thing that divided me from my friends and family was that I did not want my conditions to define me. I made opportunities happen and I took advantage of all things that came my way. Not like a hustle but as distinct decisions that build upon the next as steps toward success. A sacrifice of what was "fun" verses what was "work". The payoff in the end was my goal(s). I made my progress on my own and not something community based. Because in the end, your successes and or your failures are your own. yes there are people who can and will help but you need to know where and when to ask for it or avoid those things that will pull you away from your growth. Do I have mansions and millions? No. But I do know where I came from and its a lot better than where I was. My choice.

When I look at my friends from my youth, we all had the same opportunities/possibilities and I can honestly say that in my desire to move toward my personal success, their choices were their own. Their decisions where based upon "fun" as oppose to "work" and now that we are all adults, when we speak, their thoughts often go back to the point in their lives where they step away from that path and walked in a different direction.

Who's Fault?

For these kids from India, the bastard children of prostitutes, it will work out well for them and they will be in America. The actions of that boy relieving himself in public like that, I'm not so sure. He was ignorant and nasty considering the fact that we live in a civilized nation with plumbing, running water and bathrooms. You can't tell me that no one ever taught this boy that what he was doing was wrong. He clearly just didn't give a damn. No excuses. Worst case, the boy could have crossed the street and walked into the park -- AH YEAH, THERE WAS A PARK ACROSS THE STREET. He could have relieved himself there. Then there were a number of shops with bathrooms along his walk. Hell, the shop that I stood in front of talking to my friend had a public restroom. How do you begin to address the "disconnect" when no one want to listen or even try?

The Soulja-Boy video, (outside of the fact that you have a 17 year old in a room unsupervised), the kid was in a hotel room. Last I checked, hotel rooms have bathrooms. WHY ARE YOU DROPPING URINE ON THE HEADS OF PEOPLE? Not to mention the balconies of the people below. THEN YOU VIDEO TAPE YOUR STUPIDITY??? Even more so, you are more concerned about having your tiny penis being filmed or having the stigma of being "gay" than being arrested and thrown out of the hotel? GO FIGURE?

I have been told that I sound like Bill Cosby ranting about the poor. I really don't know how to take that. I mean I do believe in a lot of what he has to say yet I am also part of the community he is talking about as well. In being that, and having an open mind, much of what he preaches is true and behind closed doors, inner city parents, clergy, educators, small business owners, and others agree whole heatedly. It just seems that those whom scream the loudest opposing Bill are those who capitalize on the disenfranchisement and perpetuation of Niggaism in the poor as it relates to People of Color.

Bill Cosby has a book out entitled, "BLACK PEOPLE, COME ON", which should be the focus of Black People for the next ten years. Say what you want about the man, he has a serious point to make and we are missing it because all we only see is Bill Cosby as a comedian when he is a man who wants to re-connect the disconnect in all of us by keeping our youth from pissing on the path which lies before them.