Where you from?
Angela Davis discovers her ancestors were slave owners and Puritans. Who does she write the check to? Is Ms. Davis the new face of White Supremacy?
I’m starting this post with a message to my readers, my community. Those that have been along since the start probably know my inner workings better than some people I’ve known for decades. For those that just got onboard, hang on. Attention and intention are the currencies currently propelling the creative curations we all strive to monetize.
Asking for that money is a whole ‘nother story, and one that most writers are not as proficient at. The support you provide, however, is far more valuable than legal tender. I’d call it the tender tender. It’s the care quotient. Prepare for cliché:
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s true for a reason right? I know how much you care. And I cannot believe that you care how much I know.
One of my struggles as a writer, and I know other writers share this struggle because there are chat rooms devoted to the “Struggle of Writing”, is what to write about that will connect with my readers. And how much of myself do I have to give to get what I need in return.
That term, if it applies to an author’s inner turmoil during the creative process that results in a coherent string of words put to paper, is such a First-World problem it’s almost disgusting. But it’s the basis of civilization.
More disgusting is the recent reports of major big-city schools having a zero population of students that read at grade-level. (Or do math, for that matter!) Struggle of Writing is what I saw last week interviewing over 3 dozen job applicants.
I created a questionnaire (below) that took some applicants a full 20 minutes or more to complete. Some expressed apologies for reading or writing less proficiently that they thought was acceptable without an apology. Weird.
My goal was not to embarrass anyone, but that was the unintentional result for some. That was awkward. My goal was to make my life easier by having their names and info in the same place for all applicants. I could flip through them easier. It was all about me. Naturally.
Unintended consequences always happen, and happen exclusively I believe, to bite the arrogant in the ass. Speaking from first-hand knowledge. I’d love to know in the comments your thoughts on this.
Name: ____________________________ Date: ___________________________
Position Applying For: __________________________ Cell: _________________
Weekly Availability M T W T F S S Email: _______________________________
Experience & Aptitude
Do you have catering or food service experience? Y N - Years
Doing what?
What is the largest number of guests you have served?
Name the types of Banquet Service you are familiar with?
Do you possess the following Certifications?
Serv Safe Food Handling Card – Handler or Manager
RBS Alcohol Training, TIPS, or other alcohol training
Any other specialty training or certifications
Are you meticulous about your appearance and uniform?
What’s more important to you? being right or being fast
What do you like more? working alone or being on a team
Do you perform well under pressure? Do you like to meet hard deadlines?
Do you love flexibility, change, and adaptation? Do you accept and process direction easily?
Do you love Music and working outside? Can you stand for extended periods and lift about 25 lbs.?
Merle Haggard is a white dude. Charley Pride is a black dude. Both created music that imprinted on my life from the ages of 10-14. Both are cowboys. Something a lot of people said only white dudes could be when I was a kid. I never saw a black cowboy in a movie or TV show when I was a kid.
Hell, black dudes weren’t even outlaws. That dishonor was heaped upon the red dudes. Never mind the complete subjugation of the yellow dudes - railroads, laundry and all. Are women and children even mentioned?
But I did see black dudes in music. All kinds of music. Even music that “only white people listened to”. From an early age, I learned to trust my eyeballs and gut-feelings when it came to people that I interacted with as it related to their skin color. The inability of so many people to honestly address race is debilitating us as a nation, and it’s eating our souls away.
I found some pretty thoughtful pieces about Charley Pride and his impact on us, a nation. His impact on America, and the American soul, cannot be understated. Yet despite his progress and acceptance and celebrity, we still find the same headlines, usually from the same places.
Systemic racism anyone? In this article by Nina Renata Aron
Charley Pride’s music taught listeners that country music was black music, too
The mythology of cowboy culture is aggressively white, but there was always a black West.
I thought that the lyrics of the first song on the playlist need to see the day of light. I hope you eyeballs see them.
Enjoy Merle Haggard’s I’m A White Boy
Some folks call me a ramblin’ man I do a lotta thumbin’ and a kickin’ cans And it wouldn’t do an ounce of good to call my name Cause daddy’s name wadn’t Willy Woodrow And I wadn’t born and raised in no ghetto Just a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing Well I’m out to find me a wealthy woman And a line of work that don’t take no diploma I ain’t got much to lose but a lot to gain Well some might call me a goodtime fella I ain’t black and I ain’t yella Just a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing Yeah I don’t want no handout livin’ Don’t want any part of anything they’re givin’ I’m proud and white and I’ve got a song to sing Well I’ve said a few things and I’ll admit it If you wanna get ahead you gotta hump and get it I’m a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing Hump and git it now Yeah I’m a small town boy been around a little I like guitars and I like a fiddle And that’s the kinda soul it takes to fan my flame Well I’m a blue eyed Billy kinda frail and ruddy So I’ll have to work to be somebody I’m a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing I don’t want no handout livin’ And don’t want any part of anything they’re givin’ I’m proud and white and I’ve got a song to sing Well I’ve said a few things and I’ll admit it If you wanna get ahead you gotta hump and get it I’m a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing I’m a white boy lookin’ for a place to do my thing
‘No, I Can’t Believe This’: Angela Davis Stunned After Learning Her Ancestry Traces Back to Slaveholders and the Mayflower
“We might characterize this current conjuncture as a moment when the past has finally caught up with the present,” said Davis. “The lynchings of the past are continuously affecting us in the present.”
I could roast the irony of that statement and feed it to the masses. It’s soul-satisfying nourishment should go far and wide, and touch every one of every skin color.
A famed Black Panther who's also a communist has faced calls to pay reparations after discovering her ancestors were white puritans who arrived in the US on the Mayflower.
Angela Davis, 79, was flabbergasted to discover both sides of her family were white, and that her mom's ancestors were slave owners, on PBS show Finding Your Roots.
What happens when the racial-social construct you’ve built over decades and decades of life suddenly collapses? What if the under-pinning and over-arching everything of your life as it relates to your racial-social identity and how you’ve positioned yourself in that “struggle” evaporates in a second?
What happens when the racial-social “battle” you’ve placed yourself at the intersection and flash-point of suddenly eviscerates? And what if a genetic test refutes every single facet of your oppressed-oppressor argument and completely invalidates the plausibility and practicality of the slavery reparations movement?
Let’s meet Angela Davis and Henry Louis Gates and find out, shall we? If you’re not familiar with Angela Davis, here is some Wiki Info on her political activities
In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies—including conspiracy to murder—she was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. During the 1980s, Davis was twice the Communist Party's candidate for vice president; at the time, she also held the position of professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University. In 1997, she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex. In 1991, amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union, she broke away from the CPUSA to help establish the CCDS. That same year, she joined the feminist studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became department director before retiring in 2008. Since then she has continued to write and remained active in movements such as Occupy and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
All cool and good with me. Remember, ex-cons don’t judge. She paved her own road with her own choices and deliberative actions, and reaped celebrity and renown for her strident racial identity and out-spoken support of the Industrial Oppressed-Oppressor Rage Machine.
Boom! Just like that, the Oppressed is the Oppressor. Oops - that creates an uncomfortable and awkward moment. Ugh! So delicious when pure irony shows her ivory-white face - er - let’s skip the descriptive color of skin and face. Seems like that’s what got Miss Angela in hot water to begin with.
Confusing skin color with race is always a dicey (and dirty) thing. Building a rage machine on that premise is a recipe for disaster. A man-made disaster of epic proportions. So thanks Angela Davis, for becoming the latest poster child on the helpless hopelessness of racial oppression and the slavery reparations movement.
Yeah, there is racism and there are racists. Sadly, for the Rage Machine, not all white people fit the bill. Apparently, some white people have black skin. Hmm, who knew? Certainly not Angela Davis. I mean, she’s no Rachel, now is she?
Wait a minute. Maybe she is. A white woman masquerading as a black woman, demanding all kinds of things from white people. And if it wasn’t given to her, she used violence to take what she thought she was due. Simply due to the level of melatonin in her skin.
And now, that whole house of cards has blown right over. And it couldn’t have happened to a more perfect example and at a more perfect moment. If Angela Davis were to make a public statement to the effect that all of her former beliefs were based on her limited understanding of her full family ancestry, it would go such a long way.
And she is not wrong for believing what she believed. She didn’t know the whole truth. But now she does. But believing anything differently from this point on is delusion. And nothing more than Racism.
Most white people I know or have ever known detest racists. Most white people I’ve known actively call out racism. I wrote about that in June of 2021.
I’m not saying no. I’m saying let’s talk. Hard to talk when the other side automatically says no. Period. That is NOT a conversation about race.
THIS IS OUR PROMISE
Mission Statement
The American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) Advocacy Foundation is a grassroots organization that arose in response to a national landscape rife with yawning racialized gaps. With an eye toward the origins of these asymmetrical outcomes located in the institution of slavery, our organization prioritizes reparations for descendants of chattel slavery in the United States of America. Ours is an experience defined by the unique, shared cost of multigenerational plunder. And as we stand in the shoes of our ancestors, we insist upon a specific group designation as essential to this undertaking.
During Reconstruction, America reneged on the promise of forty acres and a mule, depriving us of the fruits of citizenship and relegating us to a permanent bottom caste within the country that our ancestors built. Reparations is our birthright, and must come through multigenerational direct payments and a redistribution of land that rights the wrongs of the great land robbery.
A debt must be paid, and our inheritance protected. We insist upon an historic, targeted allotment of policy and protections that fulfills the promise of economic inclusion and integrates the descendants of chattel slavery into the drivers of wealth. This restoration—which brings us into alignment with the full measure of our contribution to the U.S.—requires mechanisms to safeguard against subprime and predatory capital and sweeping anti-discrimination legislation targeted for the protection of, and accelerated wealth creation of, the descendants of chattel slavery in the U.S.
Although our justice claim for reparations is sacred to ADOS, we are fiercely committed to advocating for policies that eliminate the divides faced by Black Americans with immigrant backgrounds. We recognize the lived experience of racism and discrimination among all Black people in America and we invite all Black people of all backgrounds to wp-signup.php us in this just cause.
Infant. Child. Teenager. Adult. Elder. Dead.
We all morph through the same stages of life, no matter the sex or color. Here’s a selection of the songs that evoke our common humanity. Can we get over this please?
Ric