Where shall we begin? Let us celebrate the 11% unemployment rate for Black men even though the national unemployment aka jobless rate stands at 5.9% and if your head’s not stuck up your ass, then you know that even that is a damn lie! Break out the champagne Black folks for those of you who can afford a bottle of say, Andre Cold Duck! Clink those plastic cups together and then piss in the wind because it’s all blowing back your way anyway; the shit that keeps hitting the fan, that is.
Next on our celebration list is the shit that is going down in our public education system better known as the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ if you’re a student of color in these here United States of America where we celebrate Black History Month each and every February. This month is dedicated to showcasing the achievements of Black people in America. We are celebrating each and every single achievement that has not yet occurred but will eventually occur and we are real sure of this happening any day now.
To continue the celebrations, let us look at the child poverty statistics that are sure to impress us during these celebrations of future achievements that we are hell bent on celebrating this month. We are celebrating the fact that ‘child poverty in America is at its highest point in 20 years, putting millions of children at increased risk of injuries, infant mortality, and premature death’. And if that isn’t bad enough, ‘7 million kids still don’t have health insurance’. This is just so worth celebrating, what an achievement! What a dream as opposed to a nightmare. I wonder what that famous man who had a dream, would think of this. I seriously wonder.
But wait! There is more to celebrate this Black History Month! The good news just keeps on coming. ‘Incarceration rate for African-Americans now six times the national average’ is still making headlines among Black prisoners and their mostly white guards and the white slave patrol that arrested them for say, selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, selling marijuana or crack while completely ignoring the white man that was buying said crack and marijuana from the guilty by birth African-American other wise known as Colored otherwise known as Black otherwise known as felon or prisoner no.1,000,034. White folks, why don’t you just lock up every single Black person at birth? It’ll save you the trouble of doing so later on since many of us will know what it feels like to be shackled just as those we are descended from knew what it felt like. And the beat goes on and we celebrate it.
And ‘here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People’, now ain’t that a bitch?! Unfortunately, Michael Brown is not here to celebrate this Black History Month with us because he was shot and killed by a cop. Twelve year old Tamir Rice is also not here this year to help us celebrate because he was shot and killed by a cop while playing with a toy gun in a park. John Crawford, likewise, is not here to celebrate because he was shot and killed by a cop in Wal-Mart while holding a toy gun. Eric Garner, unfortunately, for him, was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes and that cost him his life and so he will not be joining in the celebrations. Terrance Franklin was shot and killed by cops following a traffic stop and he will not be celebrating ether. Seven year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was shot and killed by a cop while she slept and the charge of manslaughter against the cop that shot and killed her was dropped and so, she is not just ‘under-the-weather’, she is underground and therefore, is not able to celebrate this historic month. Let us celebrate on her behalf.
Fortunately, I have found yet another statistic that gives us even more of a reason to celebrate Black history month. Black families are seven times more likely to be homeless. We have come so far this February in the year of our Lord 2015, have we not? Blacks make up half of the U.S. homeless population. Doesn’t that just give you a warm and comfortable, cozy feeling that those homeless people lack? These are achievements that we have here folks! Time to celebrate and to keep the momentum going. Our ancestors would be so proud of where we are today. Don’t you think? Does this not make you aware that BLACK LIVES DO NOT MATTER?!
Now, on the other hand, Tyler Perry will dress up in drag and put some Black folks to work on another Madea movie and Beyoncé will croon about a Halo for Jay-Z and Jay-Z will rap about niggas while DMX will head back to prison for drug possession, get out on probation again and then go right back in for drug possession. Viola Davis will have no problem getting cast as yet another maid after her role in ‘The Help’ and Forest Whitaker is probably all set to play yet another version of someone’s Butler since every one is well aware that us Black folks are so good at bowing and scraping and being subservient to our ‘betters’.
Finally, I’ve given you many reasons to celebrate this month. The reasons are endless and our achievements that we will watch for some time in the future are making life much better for so many of us and that is why we must enjoy this Black History Month. We have no need to march and protest like those Black people in the 1960s did. We are so past that in this here post-racial America. I mean, what we have here is a post-racial America, is it not? But nevertheless, Dr. King would be so proud as would his stalwart, fellow marchers-in-arms at the progress that we have made since his infamous, I Have A Dream speech. We shall overcome! Uh…what I meant to say is that, “We did overcome!” Now like the good little sheep you are, start celebrating all of this shit!! And look ahead to when the REAL achievements will come because surely they must come!
shelbycourtland 
I was feeling pretty good today Ms.Courtland thank you for bringing me back to my Black reality.
Hey, could you put up a tumblr share button? I’d like to reblog straight from the your blog. Thank you.
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Well, HLJ, I am real, if I’m nothing else and so therefore, I must keep to ‘keeping it real’, as real as it gets and as you can see, reality really does suck, BIG TIME!
Thanks to the ever so helpful Dr. Bramhall, she has located the Tumblr share button for me that I had hidden under the “MORE” button located right beside the ‘google’ button. Thanks Dr. B! Just press the ‘more’ button and tumblr should appear.
However HLJ, I do appreciate your comment and the fact that even though this took your good mood and trashed it, you wish to reblog it. Thanks for the thought!
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You can find the tumblr share button by clicking the more icon.
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Thanks Dr. Bramhall! It’s a shame you’ve got to come onto my blog and help me ‘share’ it. LOL!! Now you believe that comment that I wrote stating how I was a ‘kindergarten reject’. I was SO not braggin’, just saying’!
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I see commercials all the time asking for money to feed the children, as well as other cries for help. And I sit there and think, If only I had the ways and means, I would help them all. But as always, I come back to the reality that I can’t save any of them. Hell, I can’t even save myself, without a social-security check and medicare/medicaid. So I give what I can, when I can, to the local food bank and shelter and continue to wish I could do more. But at least, in this case, I can help a little.
And in the same way, I wish, as a white man, I could undue everything that you have written about here. But I have no way to get that done either. So just let me say that I am sorry, so sorry for all of this. As worthless as this apology is, it is all I have to offer, except to say that I hear you and care about you and all people.
I hate that all of what you have shared, here, is true, I wish it were not, as I know you do also. And I hate the system that has led whites to either stand by or take part, as these atrocities have been perpetrated on you and other black people. And, for what it is worth, I will continue to write about these issues, in hopes it may awaken just one person.
I wish I could do more.
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Sojourner, I understand. Believe me I do. People like you are not the problem. And even if you had money to donate to some corporation fronting as a charity, you’d be throwing your money into the hands of some CEO and not to the people that you intended to help. So do not feel bad on that score. I have long since ceased throwing good money after bad at ‘charities’. They are ‘non-profit’ my ass!
I hate that I felt the need to post this but for the life of me I just cannot understand why Black people jump on board with this Black History Month shit every year as though we have made strides and gains when we really have not and it is quite obvious that we never will.
Thank you for being kind enough to be concerned and for wishing that there was something you could do. And thank you for your comment. I appreciate it!
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I’m glad you posted this! It’s just troubling that people like me could be this inhuman, this assholish and monstrous. You need to post this kind of truth. And you are absolutely right, Shelby, black people are as asleep and easily led around as whites and every other race. Keep after them!
I didn’t mean to make this about me, although, now, it seems like that is exactly what I did. Just for the record, I know you accept me for who I am.
Anyway, forgetting that. You keep doing what you’re doing, because I know I am not the only white person who visits here that you have helped to either awaken or clarify these issues to. And I’m not blowing smoke here! I was troubled about my feelings on these issues for years, until I came across you and your posts. And you may not believe this, but as screwed up as life is right now, your writing has brought me back to a reality, sanity and peace about people issues (“racial”) that I haven’t experienced since my college days. And this is a great blessing to me!
Oh, and by the way, I give to the local food bank and homeless shelter, so I know where the money is going. But you’re right, the pigs will even take our money, while pretending to help people like us. A few years back, I was almost homeless. But a friend and family saved my sorry ass!
Keep it up, Shelby. What you have to say is important for all of us!
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Sojourner, many of us are asleep and have been for quite some time and that is why what is going down today IS going down today because we just refuse to see the writing on the wall because we were and are too busy fighting and hating one another.
But when the smoke clears and the dust settles, who gets fucked up? Hint! It ain’t the motherfuckers that are behind the shit stirring. It’s us, all of us! We’re all fucking in the same boat only we can’t see that or either we just don’t want to see it and like Dr. Bramhall said, many white people who still find themselves somewhat in what’s left of the middle class are delusional because they think that their status is going to continue. It won’t but when faced with the alternative, they just cannot imagine their little perfect world turned upside down and so they toss their head at the poverty stricken because they just know, that’ll never be them. Well, they’ve got it coming and I’ve said this before, “when a person doesn’t have far to fall, the fall ain’t as hard, the higher up you are, the harder the impact is gonna be when ass hits the pavement.”
And that is extremely thoughtful of you in giving to the local food bank and all because it is those who have less that are helping those who have even less. I’ve found that to be true, always!
Take care Sojourner! You’re one of the good guys!
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Racism is such an incredibly effective way to get white people and black people to fight among one another instead of fighting the sociopathic corporate CEOs and politicians who have bankrupted this country. White working people insist on clinging on to white privilege because it allows them to delude themselves that they’re going to be okay.
The reality is that the US in bankrupt – according to this financial analyst at this London brokerage firm Tullett Prebon, total US debt is 449% of annual GDP. There’s absolutely no way the debt can be repaid based on future growth. Global economic growth ended in 2000 owing to the high cost of energy. All the economic indicators are just smoke and mirrors.
Our government leaders refuse to own up to this reality. Instead they accumulate even more debt through endless wars and by promoting endless consumer consumption and debt. And they ramp up militarization of our local police to suppress legal protest and terrorize black people, in case they decide to protest the dire unfairness of their situation.
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And Dr. Bramhall is right again!
But Black people cannot win! Black women are blamed for having abortions and yet when they have the baby, they are accused of being free loading, Cadillac driving welfare queens. That shit is eaten up and passed down and reprocessed and regurgitated again. That’s to make the whites look at Black people as though we are just sitting around getting free stuff which means that Black folks are not paying taxes and that white folks are supporting Black folks by the paying of their taxes for social programs. From decades past to present day, statistics prove that there have been and there are more whites receiving welfare than are Black people. But that gets conveniently ignored because if it doesn’t set with a certain narrative, then it’s gets tossed and the bullshit is spread.
The poor white folks, especially in the south, will shoot themselves in the foot by electing and re-electing crooks that continue to cut programs that would help poor white folks. But somebody pointed the finger and said that a particular program helped a Black person and so, “Oh hell no! We can’t fucking have that!” And many white folks are still in the south, uneducated, living in extreme poverty and yelling and screaming up one side and down the other that those n*****s are this, that and the other. Just as you say, Dr. Bramhall, they’ve got us right where they want us; pointing the finger at one another instead of pointing it in the direction of where all the shit is being prepared. And while we’re supposed to fight over table scraps, they’re having a grand ole time sitting back and watching their careful planning bear sour, nasty ass, rotten fruit!
And I am certainly not giving Black people a free pass in all of this shit that’s going down because we have tremendous purchasing power and what do we do with that power that we have? We go out and buy, buy, buy and amass a shitload of debt and then we head on over to the Title Loan Store and the PayDay Loan Store and Rent-A-Center and fuck ourselves even more. Babies do not need designer jeans and designer footwear. What is needed is responsible parenting. We don’t need a gigantic HDTV filling up an entire wall so that we can then sit down and for hours, watch some stupid mindless drivel. We’ve got some real issues and some of the shit that goes down, we could do something about some of it. But we don’t.
The so-called Black organizations are no better because instead of encouraging the Black community to open up banks and grocery stores and help each other out with opening up consignment shops, those organizations take the donations and then throw lavish parties to give awards out to shit that played in The Help and The Butler and Billy Bob’s Black Sex Slave. That’s the best these organizations can do? No! It’s just what they do!
You are also right again that this shit is sinking like a stone and that is why wars will continue to be fought over made up bullshit because what else do they have? They got nothing! If people don’t have money to spend, what happens? The shit collects dust on a shelf. Like I’ve said before, “This goddamn party is over!” But the problem is that there is nothing else the government can do besides keep the war machine revved up and point us toward a made-up enemy to keep us in line and when we can no longer be kept in line, all hell is going to break loose.
Dr. Bramhall, I sincerely thank you for that most spot on comment!
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“Racism is such an incredibly effective way to get white people and black people to fight among one another instead of fighting the sociopathic corporate CEOs and politicians who have bankrupted this country. White working people insist on clinging on to white privilege because it allows them to delude themselves that they’re going to be okay.”
A spot-on Amen!!!
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Black History Month. Yes, and that on the shortest month of the year. But, I’m sure that was just an oversight.
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Peter, I don’t know why they even bothered. And of course, the rationale behind having Black History Month in February is said to be because it coincides with Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and Frederick Douglass’s birthday. Now, I have not read everything that Frederick Douglass has ever written but I would be greatly surprised if he threw a lot of accolades Abraham Lincoln’s way for purportedly freeing the slaves as if that was all the Civil War was about.
Needless to say, just as Frederick Douglass spoke about why should the Black person celebrate the Fourth of July, for what purpose? For what reason? There is none. We were never freed. Freed my ass!
Frederick Douglass on the meaning of the 4th of July
And his words are just as profound today as they were when he first spoke them back in goddamn 1852! Because ain’t a goddamn thing changed! This country has always reeked of hypocrisy and REVOLTING BARBARITY and it always will!
Thank you for your comment Peter!
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