Dick Gregory discusses Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., what really happened with Dave Chapelle’s “disappearance to Africa,” white supremacy, Bill Cosby’s attempted purchase of NBC, the link between pollution and crime, cannibalism and bath salts.
In 1978, Jill Brown became the first African-American woman to fly for a wajor United States commercial airline.
“All the so-called ‘secrets of success’ will not work unless you do.” -Author Unknown
In a world where abbreviated text messages are a popular form of communication, check out this passage on the importance of punctuation:
“Just look at the difference between these two love notes:
My Dear Pat,
The dinner we shared the other night- it was absolutely lovely! Not in my wildest dreams could I ever imagine anyone as perfect as you are. Could you- if only for a moment- think of our being together forever? What a cruel joke to have you come into my life only to leave again; it would be heaven denied. The possibility of seeing you again makes me giddy with joy. I face the time we are apart with great sadness.
John
P.S. I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth.
My Dear,
Pat the dinner we shared the other night. It was absolutely lovely- not! In my wildest dreams, could I ever imagine anyone? As perfect as you are, could you- if only for a moment- think? Of our being together forever: what a cruel joke! To have you come into my life only to leave again: it would be heaven! Denied the possibility of seeing you again makes me giddy. With joy I face the time we are apart.
With great “sadness,”
John
P.S. I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t. Stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on earth.
You see the difference punctuation makes? The first letter is clear (albeit clunky) profession of undying affection; the second is sure to sweep Pat onto her feet. The only thing separating one document from the other is, of course, punctuation.” -From, “Comma Sense” By: Lederer & Shore
On this date in 1914, Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Improvement Association. Also on this date in 1920, Marcus Garvey held the national convention of the UIA. At this convention, Marcus Garvey presented his “Back to Africa” program.
“To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.” -John W. Gardner
“When we get into social amnesia- into forgetting our history- we also forget or misinterpret the history and motives of others as well as our own motives. The way to know other people is to know one’s self. The way to learn of our own creation, how we came to be what we are, is getting to know ourselves. It is through getting to know the self intimately that we get to know the forces that shape us as a self. Therefore, knowing the self becomes a knowledge of the world. A deep study of Black History is the most profound way to learn about the psychology of Europeans and to understand the psychology that flows from their history.
If we don’t know ourselves, not only are we a puzzle to ourselves; other people are also a puzzle to us as well. We assume the wrong identity and identify ourselves with our enemies. If we don’t know who we are then we are whomever somebody tells us we are.” -From, “The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness” By: Amos N. Wilson
WLIB was the first African-American owned and operated station in New York. It was owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, which was co-founded Hal Jackson and Percy Sutton.
“Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie. A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.” -George Herbert
“As Russell Jacoby says in his book, ‘Social Amnesia’: “Exactly because the past is forgotten, it rues unchallenged. To be transcended it first must be remembered. Social amnesia is society’s repression of remembrance.’
Simply because we choose to forget a traumatic event, simply because we choose not to learn of a traumatic history and a history that may make us feel ashamed, does not mean that that history is not controlling our behavior. Simply because we don’t know our history, and may not have heard of it, does not mean that the history does not control our behavior.
One of the most profound things that we’ve learned in psychology is that the most powerful forces that shape human behavior are those factors that are consciously not remembered by human beings, that are unknown by the person, are those experiences the individual can swear he’s never had. That is one of the paradoxes of human behavior, that the very things that shape us and make us behave the way we do, see the world the way we see it and relate to people the way we relate to them, are those things that occurred in our lives at points we cannot remember or recall.
The personality is in part shaped in the womb itself; shaped by the genes, shaped in part by the birth process itself; shaped in the very first two year of life. Yet very few, if any of us, can remember in detail those first two years of life. Yet it is those very first two years that determine our behavior from ‘8 to 80.’ And so the idea that we don’t know, that we’re not aware of certain early experiences, doe not mean that we have escaped their effects. In fact it puts us more profoundly under the influence of these unknown forces…
Those people and parents who have escaped their own history as a result of trying to escape anxiety, fear, shame and so forth, may pass escapism onto their children as history. That history of escapism then becomes a part of their personality and they become vulnerable to addictions and all other kinds of terrible habits and orientations in the world. Why do we think we were robbed of our history if it was not to serve this purpose?
The individual who has amnesia suffers distortion of and blindness to reality. The individual who cuts himself off from his history is self-alienated. There’s a whole part of himself that’s completely shut off from his use. It’s as if there were two parts. One part is unknown, yet because it is unknown doesn’t mean that it is not effective. We have to devote energy to unknowing. We have to direct perception to unknowing. We have to say: ‘Let me turn my face so I cannot see; let me not think about it.’ So the struggle to not know itself becomes a creator of behavior and personality structure. So the idea that not knowing one’s history somehow permits one to escape it is a lie. In fact, it brings one under the domination of the more pernicious effects of that history and opens the personality up for self-alienation, self-destruction.
A person who is suffering from amnesia lives a life based on negation, not on affirmation, not on growth and development, but lives life in such a way as to deny life and reality and to deny parts of his own personality and himself. Life then becomes a negation and is used to maintain a negation instead of life as it should be lived- as affirmation, as growth, enhancement and development. And people who live their lives as a negation live the lives that we see ourselves living today- going deeper and deeper into hell and going deeper into self destruction as a people.
History is real; it brings real, tangible results. When we wish to negate it and not integrate it, when we wish to negate it and not affirm it, then it negates us in the end. The negation wins out. The Afrikan person who lives in social amnesia brought on by the projection of mythological Eurocentric history, lives a life that is unintegrated and misunderstood.” -From, “The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness” By: Amos N. Wilson
