Things You Must Be Willing to Die To Say

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This may be my last dispatch from North Park if something doesn't change. I cannot go on this way. I have been saying that to myself for most of these past seven years, but yet, I've pushed on, though I don't know how or why. But after this, there is nothing more I can do...

I spent years studying the John F. Kennedy assassination because I could not understand how this great man could have inspired so much hatred, and the story of Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone assassin seemed highly improbable on its face. So since I was inspired by this man, and in many respect sought to emulate him, I felt a need to understand this, and through much time and study, I believe I do.

John F. Kennedy walked into those bullets in Dealey Plaza. He had been for months, years even, saying one thing after another that a man as enlightened and educated as he was had to know would make a great many people want to kill him...but he kept saying them because he knew it was important.  

It reminds me of the scene at the end of one of my favorite movies, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.  Not the Kubrick film 2001, but the Peter Hyams sequel starring Roy Scheider that I actually like more.  Near the end of the movie, the planet Jupiter is about to go nova--become a star.  The Discovery space ship operated by the intelligent HAL-9000 computer is going to be destroyed by this.  The alien intelligence that has facilitated this process tells the HAL-9000, knowing he is about to be destroyed, to point the ship’s antenna toward Earth, and to send a message, that it is the most important message that he has ever transmitted, and to keep repeating it, as long as possible.  I think this is exactly what JFK was doing.

I've never been afraid to die. It is just that at most times in my life, it would have been highly inconvenient, so I tried to avoid it. I've made some incendiary statements, here on this blog and in past writings. But these may be my most inflammatory words to date, but also some of my most important. They are things that are painfully hard to say for a lot of reasons. 

I wish there was a keyhole through which I could escape saying them, but it seems they must be said. But after this, if I've come this far alone, I can go no farther without a support network. Not the invisible one that has seemed at times lately to be around me, but a present one that is a real part of my life. I've said many things to the group I want to join, but now, for them, I have to say some things about the group I'm leaving...

Recently, pop icon Madonna made a statement that the worst that she had ever been treated in relationships was by Black men. Now, this was an eye-opening statement because Madonna was married to Sean Penn. Before I go on, I have explain something...

There is a great movie called The Third Miracle. It is not for everyone, but if you are interested in matters of faith and spirituality, and particularly if you are Catholic, I highly recommend it. In it, Ed Harris plays a priest struggling with his faith who is assigned to investigate a Slovakian woman's candidacy for sainthood. In the process, he becomes involved with the woman's wayward daughter, played by Anne Heche, who she had abandoned to serve the Church.

There is a scene in the movie during a meeting of bishops debating the case where Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is the Devil's Advocate in the case, is using the recent death of the woman's wayward daughter as a argument against her sainthood and says that her daughter “Died unrepentant in the foulness of sin.”. In one of the better instances of acting you'll see, an enraged Ed Harris says to him, “How dare you say that! How could you possibly know the state of her soul? Who do you think you are? You are not God!”

I always try to remember this when I talk about other people. I don't know if the things I hear in the media are true. I don't know what is inside anyone's heart that motivates them to do the things that they do. I don't know the state of Sean Penn's soul. I wasn't in their house. I don't know how much of what was reported about their relationship is true or false. I've never met either of them. I don't even know for a fact whether the reports of Sean's abusive behavior toward reporters and others is true. Even some of the seemingly horrible quotes that I've read attributed to him, I know the media, so he may not have said exactly what was reported, or meant it the way it was framed.

What I do know is that Sean is maybe the greatest actor of all time, but that I have often avoided watching movies of his that I love because when I see him, I'm always reminded of that seemingly angry, violent, out-of-control young man that he appeared to have been and was reported to be, and as far as I know, has never created a public moment to globally apologize for it.  The only exception to that is All The King's Men, which I binge-watched on a regular basis mainly for the fiery speeches Sean gives as Willie Stark. 

But so many movies that I loved, Mystic River, Milk, and others, I can't watch often because when I see Sean, I see a man reported to have physically abused a woman who I admire. But I have no direct knowledge of any of this, and frankly its none of my business. I've never written or spoken about it before, and do so only now because of its relevance to this discussion.

It was eye-opening when I saw that statement attributed to Madonna, because my first thought was, “Wait a minute, Sean Penn was beating you up and they treated you worse than him?!??! If a Black man had hit you, they would have put him UNDER the jail. You're full of shit.”

For a minute, I was mad at her but then I stepped back from feeling like it was a personal attack on me, and thought about how the Black men that I know think in their attitudes toward women, particularly White women, and I admitted to myself, what she said makes sense, and there are probably a lot of White women who have had this experience.

The attitudes toward women that predominate in Black culture are toxic. And the attitudes toward White (and Jewish) people that predominate in Black culture are toxic. So if you are a White or Jewish woman, you're going to get it coming and going from Black men who follow or are influenced by the precepts of Black culture. Sean Penn might have been an asshole when he was younger, but he didn't have a racial ax to grind with Madonna on top of that. So the Black guys would have been worse.

I see a lot of White and Jewish girls in entertainment dating and marrying Black men these days, and while some of the relationships seem to be going well, a lot of them are short-lived, and I'm reading these articles about the breakups, and what I'm saying in my head is, “Wait, nigga, THAT girl went out with YOU, and you treated her like THAT?!?"

Shit happens in relationships, I didn't hear their side of the story, blah blah blah, but I'm hearing about some of the stuff these “brothas” have done to these girls and I'm like, “What the fuck is wrong with you???” If it was a lie, surely you'd come out and say something. This is why I've never really been that mad at any White girl for not wanting to date me. Given the record Black men have in relationships, I wouldn't do it either. Hell, most of the time, unless there was something unique about her that made me feel I might make a good option, I didn't even consider a lot of White girls I liked. I wasn't mad at them. I was mad at all the Black men who slandered my skin. I should be able to take them to court and sue them for alienation of affection or whatever they call that in divorce cases.

Then I see these niggas driving around in Ferraris and Bentleys and shit, and living in mansions, and yeah, I'm hot under the collar. Not that I want their shit.  I'm fine with my CLK if I can it get it back as soon as I get my car key and my wallet and my iPhone back from the San Diego Police officers who kidnapped me last week on the basis of a claimed assault of a mysterious Target employee with a scraped off name tag whose full name I do not know, who I moved out of my way fairly gently after he blocked my path in the store.  

I'm never jealous of people having nice things if they've earned it.  I don't mind Jay-Z, LeBron, Steph, Will Smith, cats I respect, owning any fancy shit their heart may desire. Happy to see them enjoying life.  They've worked hard for it, and as far as I know they have lived decent upstanding lives. But when I see these cats mistreating dream girls and then returning to their baller lifestyle, it makes me want to burn down the world. My freshman physics professor was Nobel prize winner. I spend enough time in a lab, I can actually build a device to do that. Or maybe just burn down you niggas. I can do that too. But I'm not going to take the dark path. That's y'all's thing.

I've been hammering away at White “bro” culture, but while I know lots of White men who seem to have at least decent attitudes toward women, and a few whose attitudes seem positive and proper, I try to think of a single Black man I've known personally whose attitudes toward women I could endorse, and I don't know a single one. I've known a few that talked a good game, and then I heard about how they were really living...

The Black men who are supposed to be the upholders of the moral standards of the community, Black preachers, are collectively the worst womanizers and misogynists that exist in this society. Black athletes have left a trail of sexual destruction in their wake, raping and abusing women physically and emotionally, and leaving abandoned children scattered around the country and probably around the globe like dandelions blowing their seeds in the wind. It was Black pimps who made the “pimp game” cool, proudly announcing their profession with fancy clownish cars and clothes, when at least the White ones felt enough shame to hide in the shadows.

I'm not against sex workers or women who sell their sexuality. Sometimes women are pushed to the point they have very few other choices, and the criminalization and stigmatization of this is entirely a matter of male desire to control female sexuality in coalition with women who are jealous that they don't have as highly sought after physical goods to sell. One of the girls I loved most in my life was a stripper for years, but she quit that and went to college. 

But a man who capitalizes on this is to me one of the lowest beings on the planet.  A woman shouldn't have to pay a man to look out for her.  He should do that for free if he's a man.  These Black rappers act like a stripper is the best and greatest thing a Black woman can be, and I hear all of them talking about Maliah, and maybe shes a good girl, but I've never heard them mention Condoleezza Rice except to mock her, or if they needed an unusual word to rhyme with something. I'm disgusted with straight male culture, but I'm disgusted with Black male culture most of all. 

Even the Black men who might appear on the surface to be good family men, many of them have toxically misogynist attitudes where they expect to be able to completely dominate every aspect of their family life, and order their wife and children around like...well, like SLAVES. 

Oh, and because of Black homophobia, a lot of Black men are in the toxic closet too. I love and respect out gay men. Gay Pride isn't about being proud to be gay as much as it is about being proud to have survived all the shit we put gay people through.  We haven't been through that as straight people. That’s why "straight pride" is ridiculous.  And I can understand lots of practical reasons why someone might want to keep their sexuality private in a society where so many men (and women) have been MURDERED simply for being gay.

But there is what I call the toxic closet, where men are doing wildly irresponsible things while pretending to be straight family men, like the Black preacher in Maryland who got infected with HIV cheating on his wife with a man, and then gave it to her and they both died. There are a lot of toxic closet men of all colors, but it’s the worst with Black men.

Before I go forward, I have to again make clear that I'm talking about the predominate cultural standards of Black America that most Black men follow. By no means am I talking about every Black man, or even every Black man who works as an entertainer. LeBron James endorses a lot of products. I endorse LeBron James. Jay-Z would appear to me to be a good family man with a solid head on his shoulders though he may have made human mistakes as we all have. I'm certainly not talking about Colin Powell or Neil de Grasse Tyson or Steph Curry or Kenneth Chenault. I could name many more.  And there are lots of Black men who are not famous, especially in the younger generation, who embody higher ideals. But I'm talking about the predominate cultural attitudes that filter down to most individual Black men who follow Black culture like...well, like SLAVES.

Black women act like victims of all this, but they share their equal part. Look, nobody wants to actually stand up and say it publicly, so I will. A big part of the struggle that Black Americans have is a direct result of the fact that Black women collectively display an appalling and unforgivably irresponsible lack of reproductive discipline. To have a child without regard for the father's desire to be parent, when you don't have the economic resources and social support structure to raise that child in a healthy environment, there may not be a more irresponsible act than that, and Black women do it ALL THE TIME. And Black women got the nerve to call themselves queens. Prince Harry, Prince William, has any woman in your family EVER had a child and not known who the father was?

It's not just poor, uneducated Black women. I know two Black girls with Stanford degrees who did it! It happens sometimes with poor White women, but I never hear of this with educated, professional White women, while educated professional Black women do it ALL THE TIME.   I'm not talking about choosing to be a single mother when you have the economic resources and social support network to raise that child well.  A lot of women do this, and its fine.  I'm talking about trying to trap someone and manipulate someone with a pregnancy, or getting pregnant on purpose when you know a man doesn't want a child.  I know one White actress who APPEARS to have done it, and Hollywood folks probably know who I'm talking about, but because I don't know all the details of the situation, I'm not going to mention her name. But I've NEVER, never-not-once, heard of a Jewish, Chinese or Japanese girl doing any shit like that. I'm sure everything has happened at least once, but we're talking white elephants here.

Black women are so toxic in this arena, I heard a Black girl, again a Stanford alum no less, say that she had advised a girlfriend whose husband did not feel ready to have children that she should get a safety pin, and poke holes through all their condom wrappers.  I mean, you're playing with the lives of human beings here.  What kind of crime is that, for two women to conspire to bring a child into the world against a husband's will when he feels he isn't ready?  It's a soul crime to me.  If you're biological clock is ticking that much, bite the bullet, divorce him, and go find yourself a man who will knock you up.

And again, just like with Black men, there are a lot of Black women who are not like this. I'm not talking about Oprah Winfrey, or Beyonce, or Condoleezza Rice. I'm not talking about Whoopi Goldberg, or Alicia Keys, or Janet Jackson. And I'm not just talking about famous women either. There are lots of great Black women whose names you don't know. But I'm talking about the cultural standards of the community.

If an educated Jewish girl comes up pregnant, and doesn't know who the father is, they're going to be going crazy at her synagogue. Her parents would probably need medical treatment from the shock. If it happens to a Black woman, Black girls say “Fuck that nigga, girl”, even though they don't know who he is, and the Black church will put her on the front pew and the pastor will preach about father's abandoning their children, and probably fuck her after the service.

I had to come back and add a little nuance here.  I'm not backing away from anything I've said, in general, but it is important to keep in mind that I'm working here with no support resources, emotional or practical, no editor, under enormous pressure, and yes, I'm angry right now.  I'm trying to get these ideas out as fast as I can because I believe they are important, and I really don't know what tomorrow holds.  This one blog post really could be expanded into a book, so much of what I say here requires deeper explanation.

But I just wanted to point out that what I'm talking about here is Black culture, not necessarily all Black individuals.  Obviously, it is individuals exhibiting the behaviors, but we live in a society where nearly everyone will bow to social, cultural and institutional forces because it is so hard to be on your own as an individual.  It is Black CULTURE that is screwed up, but the conformity pressures in the Black community are the strongest in our society except perhaps some Asian cultures, but those cultures generally have good values, so it doesn't manifest negatively except in high depression and suicide rates.

It may not even be the majority of Black people who actually like Black culture.  Many are just going along to get along, because negative perceptions of Black people are so widespread that they don't feel they can be accepted in any other circle.  So no one should be looking cross-eyed at every Black person, because you may not know my face and you might be looking cross-eyed at me.  But we need to start questioning people who are doing bad things about why they did it, in a true search for understanding, not a search to condemn.  And we need to provide a cultural alternative that Black people who do not like all this bullshit can gravitate to, and be fully embraced and accepted in a way that White America has heretofore refused to do except with a tiny tiny number of individuals.

And further to that, I want to clarify that when you see a Black single mother, or a Black father who is not involved in their child's life, that individual is not always the bad actor who is to blame.  Some Black mothers are so toxic that they drive fathers away so that they can always blame him for their struggles instead of being accountable for their own failure to manage their reproductive business.  Often they were trying to trap the man into marriage, and if he won't marry them, they push him away from his child.  Whether it is the man at fault or the woman, our communities are failing to raise our children properly, and when those children grow up to be dysfunctional adults, its really not fully their fault either.  But as Black people, we knew this in the 60s, and yet, we've failed to correct it in over half a century, so that's on us.

On the flip side, there are some Black men (and other men) who are so toxic that they will tell a woman, "Baby, I love you. I've never met anyone like you.  I've never felt this way.  I want to marry you and have a family".  But really they are just trying to get her into bed and when they find out she's pregnant, they split.  Girls know this, but so many are so desperate to get married and have a family, they can't avoid biting that lure.  It's almost like a hack of the female mind.

This is why I recommend to women, if you're really ready to get married, I think its a good idea to make a man marry you before you have sex with him even once, if he says that's what he wants too.  I'm not for general abstinence education or telling people to remain virgins until they are married.  If two people want to have a consensual casual sexual relationship, as long as they are open and honest and treat each other with love and respect, that is a beautiful thing.

But if marriage is your immediate goal, a man who is serious, how you are in bed shouldn't be a deal-breaker for him, so he should be willing to wait.  I want to marry Jane Galt.  If she pulled up outside my building in her Bentley or Prius or whatever she drives (I suspect she may not be able to drive, but anyway), and said, "Let's go to Vegas and get married right now.", I'm going to get in and go as long as she promises me that her army of lawyers can protect me from any legal consequences from leaving San Diego.  If after our wedding, I pulled down her pants and it was like a Barbie doll down there and she didn't even have a vagina, if she was otherwise the person I think, I wouldn't be angry or disappointed.  I would just laugh and then say, "I'm sorry for laughing, but how did you ever manage to keep THAT a secret?!?!"  Now, if she had a penis, that would be a little more challenging, because that would mean she's been more globally dishonest about who she is and that would change the whole game.  But I'd be fine if she's just kind of non-sexual, as long as she loves hugging and cuddling.  If she can get tired of cuddling, she will.

But with those caveats stated, Black America has got CULTURAL problems.

And man, White and Jewish girls, if you could hear the stuff Black men AND Black women say about you when there are only Black people around! Some of the most vile, hateful stuff. We accuse people of dehumanizing us, but so many Black people don't recognize the humanity of others. Black women HATE White girls.  Might be the strongest animosity in our society. And that includes most Jewish girls too, because most Black people are not sophisticated enough to understand that Jewish people with fair skin aren't White. 

Black people didn't build any of the institutions of this country, so Black supremacy does not translate into oppressive social structures like White supremacy does. But I think it is a higher percentage of Black people who believe they are inherently superior to Whites than Whites who believe they are inherently superior to Blacks. Most Black people believe Whites are morally defective because of slavery and segregation and the destruction of Native American culture, etc. 

But yet, just like White racists never give Black people credit, for our contributions to the arts, to American cuisine, and to helping a culture that was fundamentally puritanical and uptight learn to relax, Black people only focus on what White society has done wrong, and don't consider that most of the inventions that make modern industrial society run were created by White people. You want a Bentley? White people made that.  You want an iPhone? White and Asian people made that.  You want a flat screen? You want a flight across the country?  You need a drug to treat your prostate cancer?...and so on and so on.  We just keep arguing that everything was stolen from us, or that we would have done more if White people weren't holding us back. It’s absurd.

In a sense, I feel like Black people have become cosmic hustlers. It's almost as if we feel like slavery and oppression gave us an eternal pass to demand White people support us, and to evade EVER taking responsibility and being accountable. We're like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, laying in the hospital bed getting spoon-fed because he can now claim victimhood.

None of us wants to admit, despite the fact that obviously slavery was wrong, being an American is an enormous privilege. Yes, some parts of Africa are very nice and very well developed today.  I was actually shocked by the level of development in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, which was at the time the fourth poorest country in the world in 2000 when I visited.  Africa is not a vast uncivilized wasteland filled with savages and cannibal warlords as the American media often leads people to believe.

But the American passport is one of the most valuable documents on the planet...and most Black people don't even have one. You can afford it. It's less than the price of a week's worth of cigarettes and forties. Probably less than all the lottery tickets you bought in the last year or two. But the real attitude it seems most Black people have is, “Hey, we're in one of the nicest countries on earth, and we'll have the moral high ground on the ruling class forever because of slavery, so while we might give it lip service, fuck Africa!  I'll just keep taking these checks til I can force them into reparations, and after I spend that, I'll say they MADE me buy that new Lexus with it, instead of starting a business, or buying some good investments.”.

This is probably why most Africans don't like or respect Black Americans. Our collective behavior is shameful to them, and embarrassing because the whole global community of people of African heritage gets painted with the brush of our bad behavior...

This is one of a about a dozen reasons why I think we need to retire the terms Black and White. Even the darkest people I have seen, from some of the west coast areas of Africa, are not really close to the color black. And the palest White people I've seen are not really close to the color white. As I said previously, if you saw a person who was actually black or white you would freak out and think you are looking at an alien. The terms give the impression that there is more difference between us than there actually is, but also lump together cultures that are very unrelated.

I am a big believer in rebranding. Sometimes a name becomes toxic, and there may be nothing wrong with the product, but the name turns people away. There is a very important fact about America that we don't talk about. Most Black Americans, even very dark-skinned people, are at least 15% European by DNA testing. I haven't had a test, but my sister, who I'm told has the same parents, came back 28% European, and she is a fairly dark skinned woman. I assume my test would say the same thing, unless one or both of us isn't the child of the parents we think.

We're actually all family in America, but Black people are the abused, hostile troubled bastard children that White America won't embrace. But we have never asked for their embrace. We've only demanded our rights, along with their assistance and support.

But we've never collectively given White people a reason to embrace us, but here is where White America shares part of the blame. I came to the point in my life where I said to myself, “You know, White and Jewish liberals must not be for real, because if they were, they would be beating down my door to offer me opportunities.” It was easy for me to get well paid dead end jobs. But not opportunities of the type that I know most White people and Jewish people who have achieved what I have get.  And I'm not alone.  No matter what we do as Black people to try to earn your respect, it seems like there is a slight skepticism that never goes away, where you never offer us that big opportunity you would give to a White or Jewish person with an equal record of achievement.

If all these White and Jewish multimillionaires were for real, they would be building big recruitment centers in inner city neighborhoods to find kids like me and those other people I mentioned while we're young, and help us get away from those toxic environments. But while White people have spent the last 150 years since the end of slavery telling us what we need to do, they have not truly and fully embraced the Black people who have answered that call. It's like they give us what I call a “Christian side hug”, the type of embrace that avoids too much contact.

So this creates a feedback loop of division and hatred. A lot of Black people stay attached toxic Black culture because they don't trust White America to embrace them if they leave it, and they are right. It seems like the only paths into the embrace of White America are if you are an entertainer, or if you become someone like Larry Elder who would be considered a White supremacist if he wasn't Black. You have to not just leave Black America, but try to burn it down on your way out. Or be a clown like Herman Cain, though I do agree with him about one thing; I wish Haagen Daz would bring back black walnut ice cream!

Even people like Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, who Black people consider sellouts because they are Republicans, they haven't been fully embraced by White America. Hell, I don't know if Condoleezza Rice has any interest in being President, but if she was White, the Republican party would have MADE her run in 2008, and I believe she would have smoked Obama, if she was willing to point out the elephant in the room that Obama's not Black. “Huh? What?”

This is another reason why we need to retire the term “Black”. Barack Obama is African-American in the same way that my favorite African-American actress Charlize Theron is. My favorite Black actress is probably Viola Davis. Lupita Nyong'o, who I love, isn't Black either. What do I mean?

In common usage,when we say Black we mean Black Americans who are descendant of slaves, and part of the community that went through that experience as well as the segregation and oppression that followed. It is a different usage than the usage of Black to describe anyone of African descent. In that second sense, Obama, Viola, Lupita and me are all Black. But we are not all descendants of African slaves in America.

Barack Obama was born to a White mother, and raised by a White family, and never had a relationship with his father. He does not have Black relatives who have lived the experience of being Black in America through these last 400 years.  He didn't have familial connections to Black America until marrying Michelle and having his daughters.  Yes, I'm sure he has dealt with police harassment, mistreatment in stores and restaurants and all of that.  But that is only a part of the Black experience.  This is very significant, and is the reason why some Black people felt like Obama didn't relate to us. He can't. Obama is Whiter than he is Black.

This is no knock on Barack Obama. I love White people.  Obama's mother was from Kansas where I grew up.  Nobody can help their heritage, and he didn't try to hide who he was or claim to be Blacker than he was. I had a lot of issues with the job he did as President, but I actually feel the most remarkable part of Obama's story is a part that we don't talk about enough. He is the son of essentially a single mother, lost his father and mother at a young age, went through struggles early in life, and rose to be President of the United States, despite having a complex heritage that no president before him ever had. That is a heroic story whether or not you think he deserved to be president or did a good job at it. The most hardcore right-wing Republican should give him a standing ovation for that.

But this is why I'd like to propose a new brand for Black Americans, and though I have little hope of it catching on, for ALL Americans, because Brand America has been tarnished as well. Our nation was born in the crossing of the Atlantic. At the bottom of that great sea lie the bones of Black slaves and White sailors as well, along with the lost men and women on sunken ships that sailed from the poor countries of Europe hoping to find a new life on these shores. Yes, many Americans have come from Asia too, but in times past, to get to America from Asia, you had to come West because the Pacific passage had not yet been documented.

I started outlining an ambitious three-novel series, the first of which is about a brilliant young Black girl who embarks on a decade-long project to try to create a Black Israel. A lot of Black people have talked about moving back to Africa. The effort was made to establish Liberia as a homeland for freed slaves. But this idea is different in that, like Israel, the objective this girl had was to create a Black nation with Western cultural values, as is much the case with Israel.

Israel is a Western-style democracy, more or less. Though many Israelis live conservative orthodox Jewish life, many live lives that are culturally Western, and while I haven't been there, I think it would be fair to say that on the whole, Israel is a fairly Westernized country. The point that this character in my story is making is that Black people by and large like the White way of life, but just don't like White people, and don't feel we will ever get a fair shake in a country they run. But what we want, the lifestyle most of us want to live, is a Western lifestyle, not an African lifestyle. Give a Black family a home in Newport Beach, they aren't going to sell it and go to Africa. They are going to go live in it.

So in the book, I put forth the idea that Black Americans actually represent the world's newest ethnicity. Just as Latinos are a genetic and cultural fusion of Spaniards and the natives of what is today Latin America, Black Americans are a genetic and cultural fusion of West Africans and primarily the English, and I guess some Dutch and German. I initially left out the Irish by mistake, which I think might be the biggest part of the European ancestry in American Blacks.  This error I attribute half to the fact that I have the bad habit of using "England" to actually refer to the entire UK, and half to the fact that I'm so trying to distance myself from my father's family, where the family folklore is that we had an Irish woman ancestor from whom we all get our green eyes.  In any case, if I am Irish, I'm proud of that.  The Irish are a good strong people. 

I called this new country Atlantica, and this new people Atlanticans. Initially, I was going to locate in in Madagascar, where some (mostly Nazis) proposed putting Israel, but as I developed the story, I had her enter negotiations with the Chinese government to try to locate it in a region on the southeast coast of China.

But I don't believe anymore than a new country is the answer. We can heal this one. The first step I propose, is that instead of looking at White people, Black Americans who have sense, make a formal break with the idiots dragging us down, and declare, “We are not with them, and we are not about the bullshit they are doing”, and thus put the pressure on White people to embrace and include us LIKE THEIR OWN.  Then, we can go to other Black people and say, "If you want to be one of us, here are the cultural standards we follow."

I have a number of people that I would nominate as the leaders of this movement, examples that I look to even if I don't agree with everything they have said and done: Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Jay-Z and Beyonce, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Deval Patrick wherever he disappeared to, Harold Ford Jr. maybe, though I've heard a few troublesome things,  Y'all know him and could judge.  Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Kenneth Chenault, Neil De Grasse Tyson. 

There are plenty of others and the omission of any Black celebrity should not be taken as a condemnation. These are just the people I feel strongest about endorsing. I don't know if Tiger Woods wants in, but despite the public problem he had a while back, I would propose that he be welcomed. All of you guys know him, and even though I sat at Stern Late Night eating across the room from him years ago, I never introduced myself. So you could be better judges.

Within that group, there is a wide variety of worldviews, lifestyles and professions. And that is the point.  Black America 2.0 must embrace all viewpoints and ideas, as long as people are living their lives in a respectable manner.  This is one of the great strengths of the Jewish community, that you can be Henry Kissinger or Noah Chomsky, and nobody questions your Jewishness.  Black people must emulate this, along with many other things that Jewish people have done to put themselves in the position we wish we could be in.

Some of these people have spoken out about issues that affect Black people; others have stayed silent. But they have lived lives of great accomplishment, and have been positive role models for young Black people to emulate. There are many more who are not rich and famous who should be included in the conversation.  This movement should be elitist only in the quality of CHARACTER that it demands. There are regular working people who have it worse because they don't have the resources those people (and in the past, I) do, but still they must endure the burden of being lumped in with the worst Black folks out there, because we share the same skin. But we ain't the same!

So we need to peel off, and declare Black America 2.0, maybe call ourselves Atlanticans, if people like that terms. I say we, because my genetic heritage is what it is, but like I've been saying, personally, while I have the utmost respect for all of you that I named, as you can see from my other writings here, I'm on a different page. But that would be where Black America 2.0 would be better—if a Black man wants to go hang out with a bunch of Jewish actresses and Disney MAT girls, he can without losing his community pass.

We need to establish new cultural standards for our community, keeping all the many good things about Black culture, but discarding all the toxic garbage that makes it impossible for people to see our light. But these toxic Black folks have to either shape up or ship out. There is plenty of opportunity in America for anybody if you work hard and stay dedicated, and don't let obstacles derail you. Yes, it'll be harder if you're born poor. Yes, it'll be harder if you're Black. But that just gives you a chance to be an inspiration to more people.  There are White people out there born missing limbs who have become high achievers.  Would you give up your arm for White privilege? Didn't think so.

But so many Black people, you can't tell them anything. We were pushed to the very bottom rung of society, dehumanized in fact, for centuries. We were deprived of the right to vote, the right to have families, even the right to read. But yet, how is it that when that ends, we think we should be the ones calling all the shots?!?! We don't know how! And to this day, we've never collectively said to White people, “Ok, we'll forgive you for the slavery thing, what's done is done. But we'll sit down and listen and you teach us how to live in the civilization that you designed, that we built much of it for you for free, and make us EQUAL PARTNERS.” But we're a people who don't really know much of anything, and you can't get us to sit down and shut up to learn anything.

I did sit down and shut up to learn. I learned from my teachers in school. Don't think I stopped learning because I left Stanford without a degree. I left Stanford and went on to learn from some of the best tax lawyers in America, from a CEO with an MD from Harvard and a PhD from Yale, from hundreds of patent attorneys, who are people who have law degrees AND scientific degrees. Beyond that, I learned from the everyday people around me.

But again, White and Jewish America, this is where you have to be judged for your part of the sin. Don't you realize that when Black people see what has happened to me over the past six years, being sent to prison under the circumstances that I was, having everything I'd worked for stripped away from me, that Black people are pointing saying, “See, you can do everything these White folks say to try to be included, and they'll still treat you like a nigger. So you might as well sell these drugs/pimp these hoes/shoot this dope/rob this store.”

You've just given the gangsters and ne'er do wells of Black America an incredibly powerful recruitment tool. You don't think all these Black folks know me?!? I've been seen in the poor Black neighborhoods in every city where I've lived. Perhaps y'all thought I was one of those Black people who never went around there anymore. But I was desperately trying all along to try to find a way to help Black people who were struggling elevate their lives. Project over. Project failed.

Even before that, they were whispering I'm sure, unable to figure out the disparity between me and Mark Zuckerberg, and unable to figure out why I didn't hate him. Unable to figure out why I wasn't moving up in my career.  I dropped out of Stanford and was washing cars for $5.50 an hour. Mark dropped out of Harvard and was running a major corporation. Mark created Facebook, and I believe it is brilliant and important. I think he's UNDERPAID. But if I'd had the kind of support behind me that he's had, we'd probably be going back and forth on that Forbes list.

But venture capitalists weren't looking for people like me the way they were looking for people like Mark. Not his fault. Not my fault. I never said anything like this out loud in the past because I respect Mark and the other tech pioneers. These guys are some of my heroes. And I can't PROVE that I could have done what they've done because I never had the chance. But line up some White and Jewish people with my pedigree who are in my predicament. I want to see them.  Give me the Pepsi challenge and put some venture capital behind some of my ideas and let's see what happens.

So we're at a crossroads here in America. A lot of White and Jewish people have been saying that they believe in justice for a long time. It's time to SHOW and PROVE. That means more than talking. That means more than addressing one incident or one case properly. That means saying, “We are going on a JIHAD for justice, and every DA and police department, every judge and every perjuring witness, every bank and credit scoring company, every retailer and government official that has participated in perpetrating an injustice on a Black person, you'd better run scared to fix it before we get to you.”

But again, Black people aren't off the hook either. When I sit in prison for five years, while watching Black people rally around Meek Mill, Mumia Abu Jamal and OJ, but nobody says a word about me??? Don't even front, y'all niggas know me, and you knew where was. If those are your heroes, I'm not one of you, and so I'm glad you didn't speak up for me because I don't want my name in that list.

But none of the White and Jewish multimillionaires I slaved away for said or did anything either. I shouldn't have HAD to ask, and besides, I was being held in jail with an absurdly high bail, with a family I couldn't trust, so how could I ask? None of the women who I spent late nights in offices finishing their work stepped up to say, “My experience with Michael leads me to believe he never would have done something like what he was accused of.” None of the White girls who were alone with me in bedrooms and hotel rooms and I didn't touch them and all I wanted to do was talk, none of them said anything. Nobody said a damn thing. And even through all that, I refused to attack my accuser, and I still refuse.

So I feel like I'm out here all alone now I see some stranger things happening around me, but I don't know who's doing that. Could be Mark Zuckerberg bored fucking with me.  Everybody keeps trying to get me psychiatrically committed, from my family members, to the police, to this corrupt little fuck that used to work at the treatment center I'm forced by law to go to. My sisters will do anything to get me labeled as crazy, so maybe I am. But I don't think so. I think you're the ones who are fucked up.

But this is it. If I do have friends and allies out there, today is the day to declare yourselves and change this reality. Today is the day that I should be able to stop fighting the world to survive, and be able to sit back and see people fighting for me. Because it really won't take that much fighting. The forces opposing me are weak. Like this clip in this hilarious movie I keep watching, "Satan is a total loser and he knows it."  But I'm just one man. I'm not the Earth to save, but where is my Two-Glock Greta?

I truly feel that I've done all I can do. Much more than I ever thought I could, actually. I have exceeded the capability that my specifications would indicate. I really don't know how I've made it this far. I've put too much effort into life to accept for a day longer sitting where I sit, and still be asked to continue fighting every day to do the right thing.

I live in a neighborhood with lots of lower class Black people. Word gets around. Hell, I passed dozens of Black people who gave me nasty looks just on the way to get breakfast today, maybe because they read that I'm lining up behind the MAT Girls. What would they do tomorrow??? Who knows what somebody might try to do. I've tried to live amongst the common people, but I won't feel safe around Black folks after this. I feel like this is something where I would want to hit “Publish” from a plane on the tarmac as its lifting off for another country. But the truth must be told, and I don't own a plane.

I think I feel right now the way JFK probably felt before he gave that speech at American University, except he knew the world would hear it, and I don't know if anyone will hear this. But he must have known that after that, there would be no going back. He had to know, in the environment that existed at that time, what he said would probably get him killed. But it’s alright. I understand now why he did it.

You know why I've never really been afraid to die? Most people live in fear of ever having to face God to be judged, because they know they aren't really trying. I know at least I've tried, so though I've never been arrogant enough to assume I know what the result would be, righteous judgment is what I've been waiting for.

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