PHRUISHUN’S PARADIGM SHIFT” PT. 1 11/16/11
"Is there anything left on this planet that's real? Nowadays it seems it's almost criminal to feel, anything remotely related to living and abstract objects like loving and giving seem to trickle through our heart's fingers like wintery rain. God's pointing his finger and all of us are to blame..." from "Green Screen" on PHRUISHUN'S "PARADIGM SHIFT"
I can't claim that I was brought up in a bubble. I'm from "the hood," albeit a "kinder and gentler" hood. I was raised in a close-knit, working-class Black community-surrounded by rail road tracks factories and slaughter houses on one side and working-class white communities on the other 3 sides. I survived racist attacks from hateful whites and the self-destructive business-as-usual climate that was pervasive among many of my cohorts.
Not only did I survive intact, which turns out to be something of a minor miracle in and of itself, I actually grew up, escaped and did a few things in this world. By the Grace of God, I'm still doing what I do. I'm even doing more! I guess I could boast, if I was so inclined, but as the Bible says, if you boast, boast about how the Lord has blessed you. I surely can boast about that! Of course, there's much more I'd like to do and much more I'd like to attain. But in the meantime, I'm here, I'm healthy, my family is healthy and I'm happily married to a wife who lives me! Yes, I'm blessed abundantly!
Something else I brag about from time to time is the era I grew up in versus the times young people have to fight through today. Negotiating America as a person of color is and has always been largely a perpetual struggle-despite of what Herman Cain says. In spite of Barack Obama being President. Overt racism, discrimination, racial profiling, racial stereo-typing aside, the psychological warfare that's been historically and systematically (if not in some cases unwittingly) waged against us, from our first contact with the dominant culture, overwhelms even the most active and insidious imaginations.
When I say "historically," I mean that it's always been this way. When I was in my teens, I thought that I was witnessing the end of the old way of doing things, of mistreating people, of robbing people, even lynching people with impunity and without accountability. To me, the 70's were about hope and about having a full future, and, if I did what I supposed to do, a chance to shape and live my dreams.
But as the line from my poem "Never Chillin" goes...
"I used to be at peace when I laid me down to sleep. My dreams reflected it. I woke up, it was 20 years later! Nobody told me I shouldn't rest til I can taste freedom on the tip of my tongue. I guess you could say I was young and dumb and full of... visions of sugarplums that danced in my head..."
Now more than 30 years later, the dreams of young people are even more out of reach. With this current #Paradigm Shift we're experiencing here in America and around the globe, the challenges facing our young people are epic in proportion. And it's not just the kids of color going through it. The entire "99%" are living it.
END OF PART 1
