“At about the time when…young adult years stretched into angry blossom, one silent rescue signal gradually found its own muster…
“In a post 1960’s apocalyptic air vengeful gratification as a solution is all one could perceive…(one engulfed in the expansion of raging mental dust.)…
Fate followed up…an inner eye marveled at the profound significance of oneself on totally unforeseen levels…a recharged beacon…of the African Diaspora…
“…a priceless item could be embraced…that still eludes greater masses of deeply disenchanted Blacks…known as a supreme sense of purpose.“
Trouble In Black Paradise Chapter 1: DISTRESS CALL, pages 3-6.
Civil Rights and religious leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) with the movement’s architectural “chief” Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) seen over his left shoulder, arrives at Los Angeles International Airport during the Watts Riots, Los Angeles, California, August 17, 1965. (Photo by Lawrence Schiller/Polaris Communications/Getty Images)
“…I contend that the cry of “black power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro.
I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
Mike Wallace’s interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for CBS Reports. Sept. 27, 1966.
FEATURE IMAGE:
I’m at San Diego State University’s Aztec Center, planning my Black History Assembly co created with Busara Sadikifu, for the San Diego Unified School District. It was during our 3rd year of teaching at the C.E.B.I.S. Project—just 3 years after I personally came thru the Fiery Birth Canal of “Consciousness!” photo: 1977.
Greetings hunkered down readers!
A revived phenomenon has whites flooding global Black Lives Matter marches—my shakeup 46 years ago launched me to cripple racism’s nonstop charge, which races to stock plenty of…
Trouble In Black Paradise.
I was a 19-year-old Art Major at San Diego State.
The perfect candidate for this new summer job position. An experimental school was being launched to rescue Afro-American children—San Diego’s Black students had the worse tests and highest dropout levels in California. This was an emergency “crisis” project!
My “path” said I’d been instilled with cultural investment, thou I was the first of my family actually born here.
Both Southern born parents were Civil Rights “active”—pumping us with personal, shocking, relentless stories of racism. Then my young eyes saw me being subjected to growing west coast incidents that drove home their points—it was in-your-face clarity my primary childhood reality shouldn’t have witnessed.
We heirs were given the drive to transcend our fated chaos:
Taught to shatter our parents’ savagely imposed limits and succeed—to defiantly standup for our “dignities,” take no white folk’s or anybody’s “mess”—make change!
The living room TV screen stayed locked on Dr. King’s protests—he was our “hero”—then, we mourned Medger Evers’, JFK’s (and all the subsequent assassinations).
A National Guard jeep patrols the Watts section of Los Angeles after six days of riots. The Guard did commandeer the front yard of my late sister Olevia and her husband Willie Pitcher, to setup a station across from Will Rodgers Park. The riot left 34 people dead, more than a thousand injured, thousands of arrests, and hundreds of building burned, damaged, or destroyed at a cost of more that $40 million. August, 1965. photo: PhotoQuest/Getty Images.
The “investment path” for me grew ever richer:
My family was ground central in the Watts Riots. Malcolm X arose and expanded my heroes. The new Black Power, Black Pride movement invigorated me, I jumped in—experiencing the state and nationwide 1969 student “walkouts” that shutdown our schools for weeks—we demanded majority white teachers “respect” our human dignity and that Districts create Ethnic History Classes which then didn’t exist.
Our urban communities backed every bit of it—success is what brought my first ever “semester level” Black History Class in the 10th grade.
Soon, yet another bomb:
My first discovery that America’s coveted Christianity was thoroughly “radicalized”—white Christians had instituted “slavery”—justified and driven by white preachers—whose very same religious damnation vehicle was adopted and vehemently drilled in “us” from coast-to-coast—by Black preachers.
Given the above an artistic genius only bolstered my “1974” summer job candidacy.
An illustrator with a “graphic communications” focus was just what the C.E.B.I.S. Project ordered—I was “hired!”
I’d orchestrate developing the school’s overall environment, create “learning materials”—with images of Blacks in higher achievement role model “positions”—I was to craft a total Afrocentric visual space (see the C.E.B.I.S. Project’s greater outline in this Series’ Pt. 2. Here).
Thus, the term “Black Consciousness” was already my mantra, so I was confident my own cultivation was well under way. Afterall, I’d learned about the Summer Project in my Black Child Development class—an elective I didn’t have to take.
But I’d no concept of coming thru the Fiery Birth Canal of Consciousness—or that C.E.B.I.S.’s experience was stacking my world with “guides”—which would flick my switch to a painful awakening.
The late Busara Sadikifu was at San Diego State’s Aztec Center with me, planning the Black History School Assembly we both created. December, 1977.
Busara Sadikifu was a fellow college student and C.E.B.I.S. colleague.
Our instant connection was thrilling—it was multifaceted “mystical!” Unlike myself she was very aware of her “guide” presence for me—a fortune I’d soon learn had averted my destruction!
She joined a life-to-life network of Afrocentric people showing me Black history’s truer depths.
The grand fascination though, at discovering the same multi scaled ancient Black civilizations and hidden innovative individuals (that my art was visually bringing to life) began shifting—an unsettling sensation emerged in me hinting that this wasn’t just a “novelty.”
A key opener in my book, “Trouble In Black Paradise” explains it:
“The ‘lens’ this time would do something different: it illuminated (and specifically exonerated) a Pan-African global legacy factor that had been maligned and spitefully buried; Black antiquated history itself was diligently rescued from the brink, reconstructed by the likes of these leaders…”
C.E.B.I.S.’s heart held a vital supplement:
Our now “knowing” the scope of Afro achievement in order to realize our current potential was just the beginning—we had to now “comprehend” the deeper scope of those who actually controlled the withholding—we must “x-ray” the racist machine itself—seeing what the “us” existing in “America” truly meant:
Thus the patriotic “illusion”—of my own country’s genuinely operating and “fighting” for my best interest—had its cover thoroughly snatched away!
Rancid reality “screamed” our government’s not protecting me!—my life is utterly disposable!
I am sacrificed by both the legislature’s “white power” mechanics and white people in “general”—who, when not “outright” racist, were altruistically detached and complicit—“blindly” thinking their own dedicated patriotism had them doing the right thing.
“Kuumba: A Voyage Into the African Experience through Song, Dance and Poetry”—a Black History “tool” co created by the late Busara Sadikifu Abdullah and I—revolutionized assembly presentations in San Diego City and County Schools Systems. Here, we’re seen at Webster Elementary School in 1978.
To not see our humanity as being destroyed meant whites could proudly carry out “proper etiquette!”
“Guides” knew exactly what was about to happen.
But I had totally not expected this reaction—as my book recalls:
“…conjoining an absolute rush of gushing exhilaration, blindsiding personal shock would also slam-up…to suddenly rock a…readjusting world…startling…perspectives had come a flooding-in with what seemed like the speed-of-light and dealt a staggering blow—this apprentice…wavered in…a…physically dizzying intellectual conundrum.”
The walls came crashing in on me—rocked by the gravity of comprehending just how profoundly I’d been “betrayed!”
Anyone would think that as an Afro-American—with all I’d directly experienced and been prepped for—I wouldn’t feel this jolted—that it would simply be “old hat” news! But such was not the case—which only magnified my “head-spinning!”
A “wave” hit me—Blacks are the minority of minorities—nationally hovering at a scant 13%—never having imagined such vulnerability in my life was overwhelming!
Suddenly, “all” whites were the absolute enemy! “All” civic operations were dastardly machines! I was freaking out!
Another “wave” hit me—paranoia tonnage began crushing me—“violence” and extremist schemes to plan forays of “anarchy” blazed to life—beating inside my head like hysterical film flashes!
My book reveals the clear steps my “safety net” began to take:
“…leadership’s guiding goal had an added punch…this tight, defensive young ego was being cleverly coaxed by them, away from the clutches of conflicted reaction—their new rationale about how to approach disturbing “facts” aimed to offset angry, reckless and explosive rebellion…turmoil’s familiarity had always carried overpowering magnetism, old juvenile reactions now had to be tempted toward…openness and greater “absorption”—not held to the mercy of…knee-jerk deflection.”
Busara and the entire network (I had decisively accepted) was right there to help me “integrate”—preventing my implosion and collapse—“Bu” nudged me, offering her perfect catalyst to harness my mental storm—that promised to “transform”:
I was in San Diego teaching at C.E.B.I.S., cutting my social and educational repair “teeth” when Professor Angela Davis, who supported the Black Panther Party’s community empowerment, was out east addressing a crowd of 5,000 people—they’d marched thru the streets of Raleigh to the Capital Building. Sponsored by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, in protest of the North Carolina death penalty. July, 4th, 1974. photo: CSU Archives/Everett Collection, Inc./Alamy Stock.
I was introduced to the synchronizing “mysticism” of soundly practical Buddhism.
It was perfect—smoothly coupling Africa’s Eastern cultural and spiritual “base”—taking me soundly outside of Western colonial religion’s jailhouse social viewpoint.
Violence and “violent impulses” were thoroughly diffused!
My recent discovery of “radicalized” Christianity’s false benevolence—realizing it’s edict firmly justified slavery’s insistent violence—had only made this new transition “ripe!”
A startling insight quickly came to light!
Now answered was why so many Blacks that I personally knew, or saw in ongoing reports (including new wealth celebrities) were falling prey to “mental maladies” and total emotional breakdowns—diagnosed as mysterious. These sufferers were not crazy—or stupid!
At the forefront is racism’s ages of nonstop “multi-leveled” bombardment!
The “compounded impact” is catastrophically debilitating!
The same ever building pressures that hit across the board—a thing Blacks fight to suppress that still passes down thru generations—finally overloads our raw sensory indicators.
Unrelieved it effectively juts us up against what eventually is unavoidable—the “process” of squaring-off with racism’s deep-seated reality.
That “process” is exactly where the solution lies—to that which we all dread facing—and more specifically its where such “vivid” confirmation is held:
In our own soul’s “Fiery Birth Canal of Consciousness!”
It was mind-boggling that so many Blacks without “guides” were still being misdiagnosed—which caused and offered the excuse for innumerable lives to be summarily tossed to the curb—aided inadvertently and “professionally” by Afro-Americans ourselves!
What’s worse, whites who crafted and run racism’s structure controlled the diagnostic outcomes—thus, they (and their prestigious “schools” of psychiatry) conveniently steer the true cause of these breakdowns away from their own guilty operations.
The thought of it all was staggering!
Busara was passing a baton.
“Kuumba: A Voyage Into The African Experience thru Song, Dance and Poetry,” I co created with Busara, was a spinoff of the C.E.B.I.S. Project. photo: Webster Elementary School, San Diego, Ca., 1978.
Of course, it was frightening, but I accepted the responsibility—I joined her ranks as a “guide.”
And a ripe world truly wouldn’t wait long in testing the theory of my new discovery’s “insight.” One subject’s urban “crisis” rushed in to reveal absolute actual proof!
The question was, would they walk that delicate balance, accepting my “safety net” to a healthier “other-side,” or would they be too “self-consumed”—going off the deep end into emotional disaster?
The person hitting troubled waters was my younger nephew.
“Jay” (his middle initial) was one of my older sister’s twin sons. Being second borne they were aged 14 at the time I myself started coming thru! This sister was 10 years older than me. Eventually all three (and more) would tap my fresh “guide” vision—but we’ll focus on “Jay.”
“Jay’s” life had the expected similarity to mine. We shared the same legacy—growing up in the same urban environment. My own mother took on major, but not total responsibility in raising him.
Yet, our differences were striking—and many:
He and his siblings were greatly neglected by my sister—hence my mom’s vital assistance in their upbringing; their own “fathers” were absent—my sister’s dedication was strictly to revolving door transient men at the expense of all else—“Jay’s” healthy father figures were at best “peripheral.”
Both of my parents were present, invested, steadfastly steering my direction “up”—to break racism’s chains—whereas “Jay’s” derelict young Black male life was left to predictable urban fate!
My situation in this bubble was the exception—while “Jay’s” was the rule.
Oppression and it’s “Sickness” riddling urban life made delinquency’s powerful tide irresistible—“Jay” as expected was riding toward destruction. All the signs that I’d narrowly escaped raged in him—and more: explosive anger and bad attitudes—dropout potential with failing grades—shirking household responsibility—he was lost into running the streets.
That “thug-like” sparkle began gleaming in his eyes—a power not thought accessible to him in future corporate possibilities, or his current public classrooms.
It was all the casebook problems C.E.B.I.S.’s Project worked to rescue Black children from.
Deeply loving my nephews and nieces it was our chance—I sat down with “Jay,” introduced him to our lineage of African greatness, the insidiousness of self-hatred—how the “system” set us up for failure, killing our desire to grow—I hoped to trigger the “spark” to reboot his life!
“Jay’s” siblings accessed The Project—getting resource experience outside the “hood’s” limited boundaries. “Jay” stayed peripheral, then dismissed it all, being too street entrenched—but I’d soon see surprising results from my “planted seeds.”
I had just started my very first “semester long” Black History Class on the west coast, when Black Consciousness poet Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones, with beard) was pictured listening in the east here, as American Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin (1912 – 1987) speaks in 1969. (Photo by Tim Boxer/Getty Images)
He hit some running buddies who had sprinkles of aroused Afro historic fascination! It charged my planted seeds which began popping to life! “Jay” got shoved against the Fiery Birth Canal of “Consciousness!”
“Jay’s” troop was roughshod without C.E.B.I.S.’s refined “guides”—it had a mixed bag effect.
Glaring so suddenly for him was immense “social betrayal” laid bare!
“Jay” rushed back to me excited, not to expand utilizing my “guide” base, but to brag—now informing “me” about exhilarating Afro knowledge and diabolic institutions, as if I’d never known—or introduced him.
Popular Christianity got soundly rejected—his “new eyes” saw the rotten colonial distortion.
“Jay” sidestepped my warning advice and stuck with shallow logic—his allegiance stayed with the “rawness” of the streets. Thus he could keep his previous self-authority position, not having to learn, or “grow”—making “anarchy” the end game. To him this direction’s euphoric “thrill effect” was the ultimate validation—it went well with his desired high-horse direction.
I cringed seeing an awkward situation—a beautiful Black awakening “married” to a still adored delinquency rebellion. I was fearful about where it—without a catalyst for “healthy” social integration—would go.
“Jay” chose violence—which absolutely led to disaster.
Decisions were reckless:
The troop planned riot attacks against “whites” during sweltering summer heat—he stacked Molotov Cocktails under our house—the whole thing could’ve exploded; a swelling hubris rejected our “common knowledge” ground—it made him the chosen “preacher”—he readily threw the “baby out with the bathwater.”
And then it happened:
Just as expected the growing “wild” intensity escalated “Jay’s” emotional state toward “fragile.” When high powered rec drugs entered the picture all went haywire! Still shunning healthy “guidance” he left to chill out in Louisiana—but there, catastrophe swiftly peaked and personal tragedy almost became irreversible.
The Black History Assembly “Kuumba” (“Creativity” in Swahili) I co created with Busara was in high demand, touring San Diego’s City and County School Systems for the next 3 years! At the time my 17-year-old nephew “Jay” was in the midst of being torn between the “street’s” delinquent lure and a high jolt “awakening!” photo: Webster Elementary School, 1978.
Long story short I helped rescue “Jay” from one of America’s most notorious asylums. And back in San Diego it would be a long, tumultuous recovery—frazzling everyone!
Sadly, the tool “Jay” chose to lead his recovery was not spiritual—but “religious.”
I was always there as a “guide,” hoping my proven “safety-net”—which ironically had minimized his all-out destruction thus far—would finally get a decided investment. “Jay” instead chose dogmatic Hellfire and Brimstone Christianity—the same religious extremism his newfound “Blackness” had earlier rejected.
Irony also shows it provided the “easy” way out.
Progressive Christian “alternatives”—like the Universalist Unitarian denomination—were readily available; but like me, they would have challenged “Jay” to shed his idolizing of damnation’s ecstasy element and “grow.”
“Radicalized” Christian edict was suited to oblige the damnation lifestyle—the “thug euphoria” he had always sought to validate and keep “integrated”—not to give it up.
Hellfire and Brimstone contradictions wouldn’t “challenge” the damaging type of violence that originally crippled “Jay”—or acknowledge that a violent momentum is what actually had.
Violence glorified as a cornerstone for Southern Baptist institutions—to justify disfiguring “Joshua’s” clear creed to protect the meek—is history’s dishonorable “fact”; a desecration enabling “thug-like” dehumanization to be made philosophically valid—though in “Jay’s” case it wouldn’t be aimed at African slaves.
Dr. Joy DeGruy’s “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” lays out a ruthless trend:
It is Blacks trapped in an “oppressive” fog—adopting the “oppressor’s ideals”—which even normalizes the hunger for that brand of discrimination “power.”
Mainstream religious Afro communities—so plagued by crippling Black-on-Black violence—still do succumb to the desire to have, then do set-up, the perfect scapegoat—creating a last holdout zone for the Afro cannibalism they claim their prayers act to flush out:
Where they themselves can exercises a violence made holy!
“Jay” eagerly jumped on board—fueling his pumped euphoria in that comforting “radicalized” holdout zone—to elevate his own holiness:
On June 3rd, 2020, San Francisco marchers some 30,000 to 40,000 strong pour into the streets, protesting George Floyd’s murder and that of other “unarmed” people of color by police. Predominately white participants remember that Black Trans Lives are hit worst of all—Black LGBTQ contingents have often gotten hostile response in many city’s Black Lives Matter operations. In the late 1970’s my nephew “Jay,” after I led the way preventing his self-destruction when he began “coming thru,” honed in on my “coming out” to verbally denigrate me as a gay man—inflicting vicious damnation attacks. photo: Adilifu Fundi.
He concentrated brutal attacks on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer folk stratum.
No, I don’t believe Coming Thru the Fiery Birth Canal of “Consciousness” automatically scours all biases—leaving the traveler totally empathetic to the “meek”—or the less fortunate. It does though, make it far more difficult to be in total “denial.”
So, in summary:
Afro-Americans—hit in “mass” by mysterious, debilitating emotional and mental maladies—is most likely due to their being shoved against the Fiery Birth Canal of “Consciousness.”
Stressful ailments often tied to “Bipolar Disease” indicators.
But, those indicators not being directly tied to, or “diagnosed” as “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”—in light of Dr. Joy DeGruy’s well earned insight—continues tragic external and “internal” miscarriages of “justice.”
Here lies the “cure”:
Treatment:
Having a nationwide Social Therapy “safety-net” of sensitive multi-ethnic “guides” (thru experienced no-nonsense “Elders”) enlightening the populace to racism’s deep-seated, barebones “reality”:
And all the other inhumane systemic “betrayals.”
Especially “betrayal” that covers-up legislated power driven greed—geared to capitalize on making humanity disposable.
“Guides” minimize racism’s blindsiding impact—assisting victims thru the Fiery Birth Canal of ‘Consciousness”—to the healthier other side.
Prevention:
Pass the “baton”—so collective action builds—penetrating like a massive “vaccination”—to eliminate the source of this physical and emotional “scourge”:
That being systems infested with “racism.”
And when will I believe greater white masses are truly “Coming Thru?”
When that slamming “eureka moment” has whites truly believing America considers their own lives to be absolutely “disposable too!”
WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 12: The name of Walter Cichon, a legendary New Jersey shore rocker who inspired Bruce Sprinsgsteen, can be found on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. on December 12, 2018. Cichon went missing in action in Vietnam and was killed on March 30, 1968. (Photo by Calla Kessler/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Somehow, 58,209 needless deaths in the Viet Nam War and untold numbers of American youth killed and mangled in U.S. protest streets, didn’t move the needle—even in light of Daniel Ellsberg’s scandalous Pentagon Papers (where military leaders admitted it was all concocted merely for their own hawkish “egos”).
Maybe it’ll be 142,312 needless Covid 19 deaths as of July 22nd, 2020 (over twice Viet Nam’s numbers and rising).
Maybe it’s working class whites seeing “survival relief” money go to corporate fat-cats, while Trump demands students and workers flood back into rising “infestation” traps—where employers won’t be held liable for workplace infections.
And maybe all of this will convince white America they’ve been “soundly betrayed”—that their joining Black Lives Matter “awakenings” is the only thing legitimizing “all lives matter”—bringing the thunder that actually moves the needle this time!
Keep it here readers!
Adilifu Fundi 