Don't fight the system. Mock the system.

The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn't do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn't discriminate.

Every country thinks their history is the most important, and that's especially true in the West. But if black South Africans could go back in time and kill one person, Cecil Rhodes would come up before Hitler. If people in the Congo could go back in time and kill one person, Belgium's King Leopold would come way before Hitler. If Native Americans could go back in time and kill one person, it would probably be Christopher Columbus or Andrew Jackson...The thing Africans don't have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that's really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It's harder to be horrified by a guess.

People love to say, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." What they don't say is, "And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod." That's the part of the analogy that's missing...I realized you need someone from the privileged world to come to you and say, "Okay, here's what you need, and here's how it works." Talent alone would have gotten me nowhere.

In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust. Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it - what it means. As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic. British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent. Their children are taught the history of the Empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing. "Well, that was shameful, now wasn't it?" In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren't taught judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it's taught in America. In America, the history of racism is taught like this: "There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it's done." It was the same for us. "Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let's move on." Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension. It was as if the teachers, many of whom were white, had been given a mandate. "Whatever you do, don't make the kids angry."

I don't regret anything I've ever done in life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only..." "I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.

Colored people had it rough. Imagine: You've been brainwashed into believing that your blood is tainted. You've spent all your time assimilating and aspiring to whiteness. Then, just as you think you're closing in on the finish line, some fucking guy named Nelson Mandela comes along and flips the country on its head. Now the finish line is back where the starting line was, and the benchmark is black. Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuries colored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don't swing from the trees like them. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it's Planet of the Apes, and the monkeys have taken over.

It is easier to be an insider as an outsider than to be an outsider as an insider...People are willing to accept you if they see you as an outsider trying to assimilate into their world. But when they see you as a fellow tribe member attempting to disavow the tribe, that is something they will never forgive.

Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being. 

We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.

So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it "the black tax." Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you up back to zero...My mom told me these things so that I'd never take for granted how we got to where we were, but none of it ever came from a place of self-pity. "Learn from your past and be better because of your past," she would say, "but don't cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don't hold on to it. Don't be bitter."

Nostos 𛲇 Homecoming

Donna Tucker

Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ 𛲇 We are All Related

Christi Belcourt

Eyleme geçmeyen farkındalık pişmanlıktır.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

I.

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

II.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I still don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place. It isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, I still fall in.
It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am. I get out immediately.

IV.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

V.

I walk down a different street.

An occupation is not only tanks or airplanes
The occupation is the mind, the soul
The occupation is damaging generations, stealing their childhood
By destroying the elementary nerve system of life

...

But together we gonna liberate ourselves first
By teaching values
Values of liberty, women′s rights, equality, freedom, freedom
We are the Freedom Theatre!
The individual freedom
The freedom to be what you are
The freedom to be independent
The freedom of belief
The freedom of the choice
In the end you want people who can march with you in your values
No matter what nationality or religion. But free

...

We are living in a dictatorship
And the strongest dictatorships are amongst us: the people
One on each other
We are the dictators of ourselves
Because we fear

...

Because we fear
You taught us to act
Although we fear
We fight to protect
Our minds and souls
Our lands and stones
We won′t disappear!

...

Everybody will gather into a bloody big army marching towards the wall
That's my dream
A big army of music will march into this bloody apartheid wall
And crash it into pieces
And I believe it can happen

...

Breaking the wall down, if not physically metaphorically
Is creating the grounds for hope

...

The new generation hopefully will be able to
Create for them the grounds
To build up their hope
To build up resistance
To build up the new identity

İnsanın hayatı düşünün rengine boyanmıştır.
〜
Dünyanızı gökkuşağı renklerine boyamak sizin ellerinizde.

One day you will tell your story of how you’ve overcome what you’re going through now, and it will become part of someone else’s survival guide.

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Dünyaya gelmek cesur ruhların işidir.

There's no pain-free option. It's a question of which pain would you rather have. The pain of self-suppression and self-betrayal or the pain of disapproval and sanctions against you. That's your choice but there's no pain-free option necessarily.

POV: Rejection is a Redirection

Dışımız güneş, içimiz deniz...

Patience visited me
And it reminded me
That good things take time to come to fruition
And grow slowly with stability

Peace visited me
And it reminded me
That I may remain calm through the storms of life
Regardless of the chaos surrounding me

Hope visited me
And it reminded me
That better times lay ahead
And it would always be there to guide and uplift me

Humility visited me
And it reminded me
That I may achieve it
Not by trying to shrink myself and make myself less
But by focusing on serving the world and uplifting those around me

Kindness visited me
And it reminded me
To be more gentle, forgiving and compassionate toward myself
And those surrounding me

Confidence visited me
And it reminded me
To not conceal or suppress my gifts and talents
In order to make others feel more comfortable
But to embrace what makes me me

Focus visited me
And it reminded me
That other people’s insecurities and judgements about me
Are not my problem
And I should redirect my attention
From others back to me

Freedom visited me
And it reminded me
That no one has control over my mindset, thoughts and wellbeing
But me

And love visited me
And it reminded me
That I need not search for it in others
As it lies within me

Patchwork Heart

vulnerability doesn’t mean telling

others what happened to us from

across a cafe table or from behind a

microphone


and then going home from the

experience feeling just as alone as

you did before


vulnerability means allowing your

human heart blanket to get sewn to

other heart blankets


it’s about connection


we don’t share for status

we do it for synergy


we don’t confess for clout

we do it to build community


we tell our tale

to invite others

to tell theirs


it’s the sacred cycle

of storytelling


we gather in a circle of trust and

say “here is my journey”


then we listen to

the other journeys

that are shared


we take space

then we give space


we pour

then we absorb


we speak

then we listen


we are storytellers

then we are witnesses

vulnerability isn’t just about

grave digging in our past

to expose our skeletons


it’s about sewing quilts


here is my patch

here is your patch

here is their patch

here is us


here is our story