This will not be easy
Hui Neng, the sixth Patriach of Zen, said there is no difference between the Buddha nature of an enlightened person and that of a person operating under delusion. This means intelligence only works one way; the difference is what we apply our intelligence to. If we cling to illusion, insist on something that is not true, our intelligence will create another untruth to compensate. You can tell if you are under delusion if you must continually explain to yourself why you were right to be wrong.
Because there is only one way intelligence works, I am convinced I can understand others if I listen, and they can understand me if I speak with my understanding of them in mind.
Therefore, I am adding every Black blogger I run across to my RSS feeds.
There are some that I just don't agree with, but we are trying to answer similar questions. I hope to be able to hold conversations with these folks just about everything because there are some things that I don't do and therefore that I don't understand.LATER: I decided to go into what made me post this.
Sister posting under the nom de plume "baldilocks" got a reference from Negrophile, for a post I was feeling. Seriously, as annoyed as I get at what I see sometimes, I recognize that even had my exact genetic structure turned up somewhere else on the planet it could not have developed into me anywhere but here…and I'm cooler than a mug. And I read a bit as I am wont to do when I hit a new blog. Sister is conservative…I could tell from her "Why I am a Republican" posts. Though I've heard similar in the past she doesn't strike me as neocon so I keep reading until I hit this:
Heck, I don?t even like every black person. In fact, I don?t like most of them. (Don?t start feeling smug, others. I don?t like most of you either.)
Some Jamaican and African immigrants I know have even said as much. The man who owns the cleaners that I frequent, an American born in Jamaica, put it this way: ?You [native-born black] Americans care about things that most of us don?t. Trivialities. You want everyone to love you.?
When black (and other) immigrants come here from places where most don?t have adequate housing, in-door plumbing, food, health care and opportunities, they make the most of it and worry about people liking them later, if at all.
You should read her whole post, as well as the followup, a response to a brother who didn't like her perspective, in which she says
And I find myself asking myself, did she see the possibly meritorious points when the comments were originally made? If so, why were they allowed to pass? If not, why not? And why still no comment on them after they were pointed out? That's all just curiousity, which can be pursued or dropped, whatever.
What sticks in my head is that she almost gets it. Black people do not want white people to love all Black folks. Black people want the same sense of belonging other ethnic groups have.
Jamaicans get that sense from other Jamaicans.
Nigerians get it from other Nigerians.
Koreans get it from other Koreans.
Jews get it from other Jews.
White Americans get it from other white Americans.
Where do Black Americans get it from? Certainly not white Americans, or any of the other groups I've named or could name. And when we try to get it from each other we're are accused of reverse racism, self segregation or another alliteration.
Meanwhile, as I've said before and will (I'm sure) have occasion to repeat, for social animals belonging is a primal need. And we, before intelligence, before consciousness, are social animals.
This is why there's so much emphasis on community in Black revolutionary circles. It's a driving force behind Africentrism, Black Nationalism. It's something most Black people understand on the gut-check level but is harder than hell to articulate.
And I need to understand why some Black folks don't acknowledge that. I can speculate, but I think I'd do better to actually read and understand their patterns.
