BBWs #9: Wille Lynch Speech a Hoax & the Big Pay Back!

    As a result of s being cut off from our roots and being strangers in a strange land we are oftentimes the most gullible people on earth...and the most fanatic! We have more liqour stores in our communities than anybody else, more guns, drugs, churches, crime and Jesus freaks! We kill more blacks than anybody else and since Atlanta has become the new gay capitol of America it seems like we are now becoming homosexuals at a faster rate than anybody else. The good news is that our fanaticism shows that once we put our minds to something we can outdo anybody! Unfortunately it seems like we have also been dupped by the Willie Lynch Letter, which is supposed to be a "How to Control Your Slaves" manifesto that was presented to a group of slave owners in 1712!

    Fortunately noted Oakland scholar and historian, Professor Manu Ampim, did his homework and researched this paper, as we should have done, and discovered that although it gained its greatest noteriety because of the advent of the internet in the 90s, it can only be traced back to no earlier than the 1970s! Plus there are some obvious discrepancies and language faux pauxs that indicate the paper was written in modern times, my guess is by a Black Studies student and child of the Black Power movement who was trying to do something to wake up his people. But he made the mistake of using expressions like "up front" and "refuel", modern day colloquialisms; because they certainly had no cars, trucks or airplanes to refuel back in the 1700s or any fuel or petroleum products for that matter!

    But most importantly what the brother pointed out was that although we have suffered from "divide and conquer" tactics, the effects of those tactics were miniscule especially in comparison to the three main components that have lead to our present day predicament as a people. And those three things that have disabled us the most are: Migration, Urbanization and Intergration!

    We have become or have been forced to become so nomadic that it can be difficult for us to build or form relationships, organizations, unity and even friendships. Urban Renewal/Gentrification/Eminent Domain/Manifest Destiny/Freeways thru the neighborhood it's all the same. I once heard somebody say that the expression "Black Community" is an oxmoron - a contradiction in terms! And however false that statement might be still there is too much truth in it to ignore!

    Urbanization and migration moved us away from "down home", back south and caused us to lose a lot of natural affection for each other! Northern negroes, both male and female are harder and colder and more independent - more like the white folks and towns they migrated to. When I say Chicago, New York, Detroit and Oakland you think of rugged blue collar toughness, not the soft, pliable, matriarchal, nurturing environments we came from! We left our land and our farms and our agriculture and our ability to grow our own food and build our own homes and towns and cities and wound up in Concrete Jungles! Not only did they take the Sun from us and put him in a book, but the put cement between us and the earth and herded us into ghettos and turned us into Block Monsters, with no one to prey on but each other!

    And all that was still managable because we still had each other and our businesses and our communities and neighorhoods and incomes and our own doctors and banks and artisians and athletes and theaters and teachers and schools and students who were performing above the national scholastic averages! But when intergration came we did a jail break from one another, the most talented folks of our communities left to go work for and with the white man, welfare came in to divide the family and without many sheperds to guard the flock the wolves came in with drugs and guns and gangs and forked tongues and suddenly the neighborhoods become hoods without neighbors!!!!

    With no land, no businesses and no property we became professional guests, permanent guests in other peoples stores, apartments, projects, hotels, hospitals, arenas and towns; subject to be thrown out, rejected or evicted at anytime. We have become like a sports team without a home game or a home field advantage, always playing on the road and trying to excel in hostile environments - like the Christians versus the Lions in the Roman Coliseum!

    So Buy Black Wednesdays is about enabling ourselves to play more home games in comfortable nurturing surroundings in neighborhoods instead of hoods and communities instead of coliseums, with fellow team mates in our own stadiums and businesses and properties and homes, on our own land, where we grow our own food and teach and govern our own children and citizens. And all this simply by changing our spending habits and patterns...and becoming fanatics about buying black, black business and black people!

(Work in Progress)

Buy Black Wednesdays 7: Columbus, the White Cat Who Brought the World 500 Years Bad Luck!

There are those who would have you believe that seeing a black cat (like me!?) cross your path will bring you bad luck. But the Native Americans had no idea when they first saw that white cat named Christopher Columbus that he would be bringing them and the whole world 500 years bad luck!         Those two hundred years between 1400 and 1600 were an unfortunate turning point in world history. During that time Europeans began to sell the rest of the world a can of beans with their picture and lable on it (a white Jesus centered Christianity), that took them from the Dark Ages to the Space Age and from the barbaric Middle Ages to the barbaric Super Power that America is today, leaving much of the world behind in a dark age of poverty and oppression, with nothing to show for it but a can of beans -  without a can opener!        When we are born into the world all we have to grow up on are the stories our parents and the world feed us. But if our parents and their parents and the whole world were brought up on lies than probably much of what we believe in are lies, untrue or misleading; Like when we were taught in school that Columbus discovered America.     And many of our parents believe that we should pursue a "I am qualified to be a success in life degree" from college because that is a part of the American Dream; and that the ideal place for us to seek higher learning is from a prestigious university like Harvard. When the best thing Harvard can really do for you is teach you a watered down version of your own stolen legacy!!!     Because the truth of the matter is...that not one single university in the history of the world on planet earth has ever been able to create one Michael Jackson, not one James Brown, not one Thelonious Monk, not one Bob Marley, not one Marcus Garvey, not one Josephine Baker, not one George Washington Carver, not one Muhammad Ali, not one Great Pyramid or a single genre of music like the Blues, Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop or R&B! Why? Because you can't touch this and you can't teach this! Black magic! The magic of black people!     This special Khemistry is in y/our genes! Your melanin and dark skin tone distinguishes you as a Planetary Elder, one who embodies the wisdom of the ages, one who is blessed with eons of insight and intution and millenia of magic and overcoming in your DNA and coursing through your veins! Just as a record or CD is imprinted with music so have you been deeply sunkissed and sprinkled with stardust from the rhythms and music of the spheres and the mojo and juju of the most ancient of years!     The number one rule of the Original People and most Indigenous People is respect your elders! But there is a tribe of Grown Juvenile Delinquents who have no respect for anything! These Baby Souls have carjacked the world but they don't know how to drive so they keep crashing into everything; spilling millions of gallons of oil into the oceans, knocking over whole (rain) forests and millions of sacred trees and killing millions of indigenous people and wildlife! You and the other indigenous peoples of the world should be teaching them instead of them teaching you!     And as far as the American Dream is concerned, you have to be asleep to believe it! After 500 years of being burnt in our own ashes it is time for the Phoenix to rise! We must stop funding the Inhumane Society and their enterprises of madness and support our own and more nobler agendas! Your community is your university! Out of all the infinite heavens and all the infinite earths that little acre of land called your community is the university God (Universal Intelligence) planted you in! And if we support them enough soon our communities will be more sustainable, prosperous and greater centers of higher learning than their universities!     This is one of the reasons I created not only Buy Black Wednesdays but also All Afrikan Saint's Day - a red black and green alternative to Halloween. All Afrikan Saint's Day is intended to be an afrocentric Day of the Dead! An all Afrikan holiday where we revisit and pay homage to our black heroes and ancestars instead of ghosts and goblins and spiritual gangsters! A day to excavate Black Gold and Black Power from incredible Black Legacies! A day where we may still wear costumes and lavish adornments and play make-believe, but we do so to re-member the great Afrikans who preceded us, through poetry, song, dance, music, drumming, skits, speeches and re-enactments of great moments, groups and individuals in Black History!     All Afrikan Saint's Day is intended to be held on the same day as Halloween. However we will have a promotional event on Sunday, October 16, 6 to 9pm at Shashamane's Restaurant, 2507 Broadway, in Oakland.     Paradise Day is October 6th in the city of Oakland, a distinction I was given for my many years of service in the arts community, but will be celebrated on Sunday, October 2nd, 6 to 9pm at Shashamane's Ethiopian Restaurant.     Vote today for the world of the future now! Buy Black Wednesday! Also check out my new Buy Black Wednesday video web show at http://www.buyblackwednesdays.com/

Buy Black Wednesdays 6: We've Made Everybody Else Rich! Now it's Our Turn!

Turns out the freedoms we won weren't enough, we also need discipline! No disrespect to other cultures, but when we got a little freedom we did a jailbreak from each other and ran into the open arms of everybody else and made them rich! We ran to Chinatown to get Chinese food, we ran to Japantown to get sushi and Japanese food! We ran to the taco stand to get Mexican food! We ran to Little Italy to get pizzas in Italian shoes and suits! We ran to Mac Donalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken and to everybody else's restaurant to make them rich!

We ran to the Asian Beauty Salons to get manicured and pedicured and our fine East Indian hair weaves and made them rich! Our comedians and boxers have made comedy clubs throughout the country and Showtime and HBO rich! Our music has made Sony, the Music Industry and the whole world rich! We've made Pimps, Pushers, Preachers and ghetto slum lords rich! We left our Black Wall Streets with 600 businesses in a 10 Square mile area and our Harlems and Little Africas and were seduced by Greener Pastures, the American Dream and Goldy Locks to make Disneyland, Hollywood, Manhattan and Suburban Malls rich!

We ran to Nike for $200 running shoes and made them rich! We ran to the NBA and made the National Basketball Association Rich! We ran to the NFL and made the National Football League rich! We ran in the Olympics and made the International Track Federation, ABC, NBC and CBS sports rich! We had our own professional baseball teams in the Negro Leagues, an Ebony Field of Dreams with the best baseball players in the Universe, but we allowed ourselves to be seduced and put thousands of black folk out of work and communion to return to our former slave masters and make them and Major League Baseball rich! And that rich ebony Field of Dreams has vanished into the mists of time!

Our young boys and girls get athletic scholorships and the promise of a free education to play ball at major colleges and universities and make them rich! "Run nigger, run!" Because this is primarily what the colleges are for and about: money... human roachtraps and 4 to 8 year detention centers for our community's brightest minds and greatest talents! And if they can't use you to further their White Supremacy endeavors they spit you back out into the world shackled with thousands of dollars of debt! Meanwhile, while you were pursuing the American Dream, the American Nightmare was swallowing up your community, killing your homies, turning your brothers and sisters into crackheads and tricks and disenfranchising the whole neighborhood once again with gentrification and disorientation and a brand new expressway where your thriving black businesses used to be!

So as a form of therapy and medication we make Newport and Malt Liqour makers rich! Our physical constitutions and oppression anxieties are so strong that we need a "double poison" to get a buzz! We can't just smoke regular cigerettes we gotta have menthol! And we can't just drink regular beer we gotta have Malt Liqour! And our poor drinking and eating habits have made many a doctor, hospital and Undertaker rich!

We've made America rich, Europe rich, Asians rich, Jews rich, Arabs at the corner liqour store rich and every Tom, Dick and Harry has fed off of and is benefiting from our labor, talent and Life Force but us!!!! Even our poets and spoken word artists are making other people rich! Which is why I'm giving a For Colored Girls, $1000 (Winner takes All!) Sistar Slam in November to encourage literacy, art, culture and cooperative economics! We've made everybody else rich, now it's our turn!

Support black and community friendly businesses everyday, but especially on Black Wednesday!

Buy Black Wednesday 5: Money Talk!

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, THE MOST LIBERAL CITY IN AMERICA and the world some say! And yet Berkeley High School, with over 3500 students and 250 teachers,  has only 8 black teachers!!! Scandalous! Shame on you BHS administration! The city of Berkeley has declared 2011, "The Year of the Black Man"! But where are the Black Male Teachers that are so desperately needed for black boys and students? HIRE ME! Give me the ear of Black America for one year and I'll make 40 million model citizens appear! Let us produce more black owned schools and centers of higher learning. And let us make it possible to fund with Buy Black Wednesdays.

HOW IMPORTANT IS BUY BLACK WEDNESDAYS? One sister told me recently, "We're going to need much more than Buy Black Wednesday to solve our problems." Wow! What a brilliant deduction! But is it true? Let's see what the major problems are in our community and see if BBW can address them: Off the top of my head I'd say the major problems we're facing are 1. Poverty 2. Violence 3. Crime 4. Drugs/Health 5. Lack of Unity 6. Self Hate 7.Lack of Knowledge of Self. Let's not quibble about the order of importance. If we can solve the poverty issue the violence and crime issues would dwindle significantly. People with money in their pockets have less a need to do crimes or drugs or be violent. Black Americans have an income of $1,000, 000, 000 000 (a trillion dollars) a year! But we are a poor Trillion Dollar Nation because that money barely stays in our communities for 15 minutes! The next time you get a pay check muthafarker do us all a favor and keep it for 16 minutes! Hahahahaha!! Pray about how you're going to use it! Everything has a spirit! Talk to your money before you give it away and tell it where to go, who to bless and to come back to you multiplied!

 

Buy Black Wednesday is enriching us as I speak because more people are keeping and bringing that money home! It's causing us to (Oh my God!) think black...more often, which is [changing our consciousness] and causing more unity(!) and getting us back into the habit of buying black when ever possible. We are getting more "touches", more connections, more involvement with each other! And when you touch black people (in their natural unjacked up state) you get blessed above all others, your blood pressure goes down, your endorphins rise up, your health improves! When you create and are around a Black Family atmosphere there's more self love and knowledge of self! Our minds are expanded and our lives are enriched when we come in greater contact with the black experience! And of course, with the increased interaction comes more awareness of Black History! So before you shoo shoo and poo poo Buy Black Wednesday let's try to do it! Let us do this one thing together and see the outcome for ourselves!

Buy Black Wednesdays 4: The Black Statue of Liberty

The Black Statue of Liberty

Bring me your tired, your poor, your hungry
Those who are suffering from white supremacy
Those who bleach their skin, hair and souls
Bring me your pimps, your criminals, your hoes
Your coons, uncle toms and sambos
Your dope dealers, crack heads and fiends
Zombies, abused, misused and unclean
Your sell outs, drop outs and cop outs
Those who are hopeless, helpless
And plagued with doubt and loss of identity
I am free and I set free
I am the Black Statue of Liberty

I am Buy Black Wednesdays
I am the redistribution of black wealth
I am self sufficiency
I am the robust revitalization of black health
I am umoja - black unity
I am the knowledge and love of self
I am ujima - collective work and responsibility
I am the giant Supernova dwarfed in every black elf
I am the torchbearer who has shown the way for centuries
I am the Black Statue of Liberty

I am Buy Black Wednesday
Ujamaa - Cooperative Economics
The beginning of the reconstruction
Of Black Sovereignty
One day a week to renew my vows
And to express my conviction and loyalty
One day a week I promise the ancestars
I will honor all of black history
Until this weekly practice becomes
A full time way of life for all of us
And every African is free!
I am the Black Statue of Liberty!

I am the night adorned with a Crown of Stars
And the golden torch you call the sun
I am the light of the world in every black body
I am the Original who came before everyone
I am every brother and sister who walks the earth
I am the co creator of the universe
I am the the ripest fruit of my incomparable AncesTree
I am the Black Statue of Liberty

I have come up from over 400 years of slavery
And persevered with the whole world against me
I have carried more weight on my shoulders than Atlas
And accomplished more feats of labor than Hercules
I am the living embodiment of all those crucified
And resurrected - no need to look backward
Or forward in history
For millions of years I've roamed the earth
And sheperded Galaxies across the universe
And still I rise...triumphantly
I am the Black Statue of Liberty

Oh ye children of the earth
Look no further if you want to see the likes of God
His power and glory!
Behold! All of your legends, myths, gods and heroes
Real or fabricated, pale beside me
I am the hope of the world
The embodiment of Divinity
At least one day a week I vow
To help set a new trend every Wednesday
And spend money within my community
Because my discipline is the key
I am the Black Statue of Liberty!
(c) 6-30-2011
(2nd draft work in progress)

This poem was partially inspired by the Urban Legend
that the original statue of liberty was a black woman,
used a black woman as the model, and was symbolic
of black people and our struggle for freedom! Even
if the legend/myth is not true it does seem appropriate
...or shall we say: propah!

Buy Black Wednesdays 3: What it Means to be a Born Again African?

First of all let's not get it twisted! You can be a Born Again African and a born again christian at the same time! Being a Born Again African has nothing to do with religion...other than going out of your way to support black people and black businesses religiously! Being a Born Again African means you realize that you and your people have been stripped of your land, language, culture, heritage and spirituality and you know it is your responsibility and delight to reclaim it for your self and your kin. Being a Born Again African means you've had a revelation! You realized that your destiny and fortunes are bound up with a people...who are like no other, who have survived and even thrived in the harshes conditions any human has ever faced...and everything you have is fruit that comes from them, your AncesTree, and it is your duty, honor and delight to carry on their legacy! Being a Born Again African means you've been baptised spiritually in the river Nile, in the waters of the Motherland, the Garden of Eden, in Blackness and Afrocentricity and you are proud to be in the lineage of Queen Mother Moore, Kwame Toure, Shaka Zulu, Jackie Robinson, King Solomon, Queen Cassieopia, Steven Biko, The Cleopatras, Josephine Baker, Mary Baker Eddy, Nefertiti, Imhotep, Hermes, Ahkenaton, The Moors, Mansa Musa, Malcolm. Martin, Medgar, Mandela, Marcus, Marley, Menelik, the Muhammads, the Mau Mau, the Melchizadeks, the African Mayans and all the other Mighty Ms! Being a Born Again African means you have your headlights turned on and you are a focused, Conscious African from head to toe because you know you are being of the greatest service to your self, your family, your community and all of Humanity by restoring your people to their natural order of self sufficiency and splendor as the most radiant examples of the Sons and Daughters of the Most High!

Being a Born Again African means that everytime you venture out to support a black business and the [business of being black] you sojourn with Sojourner Truth. You pay homage and hop aboard the Underground Railroad with Harriet Tubman on the Road to Freedom. You bring flowers to those Four Little Black Girls in Mississippi. You vote for a better community with Fannie Lou Hamer. You lock arms with Dr. King in his March on Selma. You go to Washington with Frederick Douglass to splash more color on the White House (that your people built) and demand the freedom to build your own Black House.

Being a Born Again Afro-kin means if you're at a Flea Market and you see a scarf you like being sold by one person for $5 and being sold by a brother or sister for $7, you suck it up and pay $7 bucks! It means doing like that elderly asian sister who comes to your community in the wee hours of the morning to collect cans and bottles and brings them back to Chinatown! You go out of your way the same way for Afreetown, the Little Africa that is your community! (Sometimes I spell Afraka differently, like Afreeka, to remind us that Afrika must be free!) It means you spend a crummy five dollars (20 quarters) to post your business in the Bay View Business Directory, not only to give your business more exposure, but to help the Bay View become a weekly again because some day you may not be able to afford to wait a whole month to receive the truth about what's really going on in your community!

Being a Born Again Afra-kin means you realize that God created blood cells to flow to the heart, bees to make honey and support the hive, and blacks to support Africans and (the Be Hive of All Humanity) the Motherland! And the best way to be independant is not to be independent of your brothers and sisters and dependent on "The Man", but to liberate your people mentally, physically, emotionally, materially, spritually, financially, dietarilly and every way possibly - by sacrificing and going more out of "your way" for "OUR WAY!" And spiritually, if not physically, reconstructing the original Black Statue of Liberty!

A verse from my rap/song "Born Again African":
I'm a born again African, yeah
A dark skinned hue-man, yeah
A fulltime Melaniasian, yeah
A First World Citizen, yeah
A Ma(ya)n from Swahili-land, yeah
The Red, Black and Green land, yeah
Where no one uses profanity, Say what?
We think-speak in harmony, for the children!
That's our history...

http://www.trueviberecords.com/

Buy Black Wednesdays 2: Cooperative Economics, the Ancient African Way

Thank you for supporting Buy Black Wednesdays. This new wave of “cooperative economics” is spreading across America and pan-Africa like a red, black and green tsunami of Black empowerment. Where there is vision, the people prosper. And many of you are envisioning the Promised Land of a bourgeoning Afrometropolis and supporting this campaign for more healthy, robust and sustainable communities. This is the ancient African way, to envision a brighter day and project ourselves out of conditions of sorrow and … step into tomorrow.

This Buy Black Wednesdays initiative is designed to bring awareness, consciousness and prosperity back to OUR COMMUNITIES. Black Wednesday is a promising new Black holiday held weekly every “Hump Day.” You may call it Black History Day and Pan-African Market Day, meant to be celebrated by Africans worldwide. But it’s also African Reparations Day, which means everybody – even conscious non-Africans – can participate. Especially anybody who wants to see crime and poverty go down and world peace, prosperity and joy go up and be more equitably distributed. Everyone is encouraged to participate … by supporting Black, so-called minority and community-friendly businesses on Wednesdays.

The goal is to go out of our way to support and patronize Black businesses every day, but especially on Black Wednesdays; to vote for community every day with our dollars, instead of every four years or so for a hoped for community savior. On Black Fridays, the day after Thanksgiving – which happens to be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of every November because it was decreed so by brother John Hanson, the African who some scholars say was the “real” first president of the United States – many of us thank our ancestors by blindly and carelessly replenishing the bank accounts and community treasure chests of our former slave masters and those who still oppress us and the world. We buy trinkets and bling and shiny things that disempower us and deplete our own bank accounts and community treasure chests, the life blood of our people. Black Wednesdays is intended to encourage Black Friday like enthusiasm for Black Businesses and Self Love.

I recently overheard a sister say she had just gotten over her five-day-a-week addiction to Starbucks coffee. It made me think, “Who is starbucking who?” Who are you starbucking with your dollars? And are they starbucking you? Who are you bucking up to the stars with your spending habits when you could be and should be starbucking yourself and your community and making your people shine like stars with wallets and purses and community treasure chests bulging and overflowing with star bucks. Hahahaha.
Are we such poor mathematicians that we can’t figure out that, as you spend in your own communities, with your larger family, it enriches your own family and you? Why would your neighbor rob you if he has money in his pocket? There is no reason for us to be a poor trillion dollar nation.

The new Black dollar that is emerging out of this movement is going to be incredible. The new Black dollar bill presently unfolding will be the strongest currency on the planet and more valuable than gold and diamonds. Why? Because it will be a reflection of who we are. Actually, our currency is already in circulation but it’s being controlled by other people.

Africa is the breadbasket of the world, the continent with the greatest resources, but it’s being controlled largely by outsiders. We have the greatest entertainers and athletes in the world – hip hop, jazz, R&B, funk, soul, blues, gospel and spirituals – but it’s mostly controlled by other people. Imagine my consternation when I recently went to see an Alvin Ailey Dance Company presentation at UC Berkeley and the dance troupe was multi-racial. You mean to tell me in the whole East Coast area you couldn’t find enough Black dancers to fill up one dance company?

Black enterprise, including the knowledge of ours being the greatest civilizations with the greatest history, is being controlled by others. Black people don’t need the rest of the world, but imagine what the rest of the world would be like without us. So Black Wednesday gives us a chance to control our own enterprises, arts and resources and it gives the rest of the world a chance to show their acknowledgement and appreciation. Bring back the Negro Leagues!

In the not too distant future instead of sending our children out on Easter egg hunts and telling them that Easter bunnies lay chicken eggs, we will teach them and invite them to go treasure hunting for Black businesses with us and searching for Black Gold in our own back yards. And those Black people who have become “the other white people” and gone “incognegro,” in hiding and ashamed or feeling like they can no longer afford to be Black, will come back to Black proudly.

Since integration and for over 40 years now, a lot of Africans here in the states – Watuusa: Black people in the USA – have tried to disown their heritage and felt the need to woo white customers and shoo Black customers and eschew great Black music to become gangster rappers and work for gangster corporations instead of hue-man dignity and get lost in and miseducated at capitalist universities, racking their brains for hours in white classrooms doing equations about nothingness and going off to war to battle other communities while bullets are flying around at home, instead of doing God’s work and getting a celestial education and divine knowledge by rolling up their sleeves and using all their mental faculties and doing the real homework of being an alchemist and turning their local ghettos into Gardens of Eden and Timbuktus of prosperity and international Meccas more prosperous, sustainable and greater centers of higher learning than the best Western universities.

They go incognegro until maybe Kwanzaa or Black History Month when being Black is in vogue. Well, thanks to Black Wednesday more Black people will feel they can afford to be Black again. And they will come running back to Black.

THE GREAT INTEGRATION EXPERIMENT IS OVER. It was something that had to happen, but for the most part was a colossal failure, except for what we learned from it. The whole world was set back because many of us felt we could no longer afford to be Black. So without your leadership and you playing your role, the rest of the world didn’t know how to act.

Ethos and the word ethics is derived from the word Ethiopia, because when the Europeans first encountered the Ethiopians they marveled at their regal behavior – how ethical they were. So we will show the way by putting down those weapons of mass destruction handed to us and pick up our musical instruments of creation, harmony and self-love again. Starting on Black Wednesdays all over the world we will come back to Black.

Life will imitate art and there will be an Afrocentric version of the classic Christmastime movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where everybody comes to the rescue of the hometown hero, bearing gifts. But in this case the hometown hero that we will rescue and the Great Homecoming will be to Africa, Africans, our communities and ourselves.

So tell folks about Black Wednesday and share our new jingle: “Hip hop hooray. Today is Black Wednesday.” Call, tell and email at least a hundred people. And if someone calls Black Wednesday racist, tell them: Self-love is positive racism.