Random Thoughts Vol. 2

-Learning is a disease. If you don’t learn you will live forever. Not life in terms of age, but in terms of ignorance. I dream to die young.

-Black women’s hair should be a class in college .  

It’s so complex that it could probably be a major with a concentration. In fact, that subject might be the hardest major ever. Classes would include, hair history ,

hair literature, hair biology, hair philosophy

, hair political theory, hair art

, women and hair, human sexuality and hair, grammar and hair, freshman hair seminar, hair theory, French hair

, Spanish hair, German hair, hair in fiction, Black hair since 1940, Black hair before 1940, and Black naps and society.

I guess the moral of this thought is I can’t go to beauty school.


-Best friend connections are amazing. Regardless how often or not you talk or see them, the great connection still remains.

 
-Last night, I had a dream/nightmare that somehow I had to go back to my middle school as a grown 20-year-old-man because of some justified political-educational loop hole. I woke up scared senseless. I’m not sure it was repeating what I once despised or the fear of regression that that petrified me the most.

 
-How tall is Spike Lee for real? I wonder if he will ever put out a movie as good as Do the Right Thing.

-What ever happen to the art of the Black movie? Black films used to be controversial and impacting. The movies of Robert Townsend, Spike Lee, John Singleton, Melvin Van Peebles, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and Gordon Parks that would express the plight of blacks while displaying black pride and black traditions. Nowadays, Black film is just drama and comedy with no substance. Where are the black love stories like Jason’s Lyric

  and Love and Basketball? Where are the black films that show blacks in the aspects of black culture? Movies like Do the Right Thing, The Inkwell,

Boyz in the Hood, Friday, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song?

Where are the films that showcase the greatness (good and bad) of black society? The movies like New Jack City, American Gangster, The Five Heartbeats, Head of State, Roots, Glory, The Color Purple, and Men of Honor. Where are the BLACK FILMS?

The Ugly Show

I used to be a pretty serious poet way back in the day.  This is Black Ice's "The Ugly Show."  By far one of my favorite poems of all time.  Listen to the words and see if you are not inspired for change.  You house niggas might not get it, but bare with me for 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

Random Thoughts Vol. 1

-Bad Guys/ Villains are cool because their power is not contained by society’s morals.

-Many people see racial segregation as a bad thing. If the two races were separated, which do you think would be more powerful? Honestly, if the United States surrendered 3 states as an act of reparations, and blacks were given complete sovereignty and independence; those 3 states would be a new and improved world.

-I guess that makes me a villain.

-I kissed my girlfriend last night and I liked it…a lot.








-Sometimes I think I like her more than she likes me, but she said yes so I aint trippin.


-Why do white people want to be like black people without the black problems? It’s like in Aladdin when Jafar wanted to be a genie without wanting the pains of being a genie. Whites want the full lips and hips like our women. They want the big dicks and swag like our men. Get the fuck off my cultures dick.

-“Shit” and “This” are spelled with the same letters. It’s kind of like they were meant for each other.

-When I’m writing, I don’t think, “Damn, that’s a mean ass preposition I just wrote.” I feel that my job as a writer is to make people forget the theory of words and enjoy the magic of the art. In music, people who don’t study the art don’t listen to the music and say, “Damn, that tuba in the 15th phrase of the 3rd movement hit a means as pedal 9th that was off the chain.” No! They enjoy the magic of the art. To the artist, the theory is important but not meant to be noticed in the actual art.

I wonder what it feels like to be “passing?” How do you cope with seeing all these black folks?

Why capitalize the word “i?”

If “I” before “e” except after “c” then science is spelled all the way wrong.

Pen Pals: Letter 1/Realizations

Dear Shannon,



I will start this letter by adding the most obvious statement in letter writing. I hope this letter reaches you in good health. In addition, I hope this letter makes it you without being half way opened and any mysterious blacked out lines from the German governments attempt to censor this letter. As a mater of fact, I should be more concerned about the American Bureau of Censorship doing those things. ABC…Get it? You know like the T.V. station that blinds people from seeing the truth in real world issues by throwing four unattractive, over promiscuous, 40 year old women in the face of America.

Attached to this letter you will also find a copy of “Awaken,” to inspire you. You remember? The only blog you have cried after reading it.

Although it is late in the latter, I want to know how are you doing? Are you feeling homesick like Scoby from White Boy Shuffle? Speaking of which, I would for when you to come back to the states and see me as the fore running leader of a black conscience revolution. That would be a huge dream come true for you and me. I promise you that I have not given up on that dream or my people.

I’m taking a few classes this semester that are increasingly expanding my thinking and solidifying my perspective in black political theory, but I will explain that in another letter.

Here is a question that I was asked in one of my classes that I would love for you to answer: When did you realize that you were black? Was it a happy day? Or do you remember being in pain?

I was searching my mind and I ran across a memory of us just kickin’ it in my car. There may have been sexual activity, but my mid focused on how we used to just chill and be happy. I ain’t getting all sappy and shit, I’m just realizing the real friendship we have. It’s amazing how our friendship has lasted the tear of time. Or is it wear of time?

I don’t know how long this letter is supposed to be but here is my address:

Bryant Brown

[insert address]


Do not answer any of theses questions unless they are in the response of this letter. And be long winded. Remember who you are and what made you.



This Nigga



Bryant Brown

Clip From Black Dynamite

Give Yourself A Black Eye

W.E.B. Dubois writes, “One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negroe; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body…this longing to attain self conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.” Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a split between your Black side and you American side and, these two perspectives are constantly and consistently at war with each other’s conflicting view. The question now rises, “Whose eyes are you looking through?” The eyes that you look through, either Black or American, determine how you see your people. I would be willing to bet my tuition that there are some of you reading this column that are looking at your own people through the wrong eyes. In order to appreciate, consider, and change the wrongs of black people, you must look at black people through your black eye.

In the 1960’s there was an intellectual revolution in which students, like us, fought for a new field of education called Black Studies. This effects of this revolution brought classes such as Black in the Arts, Black politics, Black Psychology, and Black Political Theory. The students who fought for these classes realized that classes taught about black phenomenon could not be taught from an American view. In other words, the American eyes see things according to their ideals, concepts, and values. Those ideals being the democratic theory; one man, one vote, those concepts being pluralism; the fight for political power through numbers, and those values being individualism; the basis of the “American Dream.” These ideals, concepts, and values are all included in the American eye but can not adequately express the ways of Blacks in America. There is a point of view that these Black Studies fighters realized. That view point is the black eye and our perspective can not encompass the ideals of the Democratic theory because for most of American history we were not considered man and surely did not have a vote, our perspective can not involve the concepts of pluralism because never in American history have we had the number to fight for political power, and our perspective’s values can not be individualism because we are collective by nature and history. In simpler terms, the founders of Black Studies realized that it was impossible to teach the struggle of Blacks through American eyes. So I reiterate my question, “Whose are you looking through when it comes to looking at your own people?”

Before we conclude this argument, we must discuss what is Black and how there is a separation between Black and American. Black is the connection between an individual and the Black struggle, Black glory, Black demise, and Black history since the first enslaved Africans arrived in America as indentured servants’ in1619. The connection must be genuine for the individual to be considered Black regardless of skin tone and phenotype. Skin tone and phenotype are secondary requirements only seen by the eye. Primarily, Black is our struggle, our glory, our demise, and our history.


Once again, whose eyes are you looking through when it comes to seeing your people? It is easy to accept your American eye because that’s what you have been socialized to do through American education, American government, and American media. But as strong Black men and women, we must do as the Black Studies fighters did and realize that our American eyes can not adequately explain our people. We must make the disconnection between our veils and “attain self conscious manhood.” So the next time you hear that beautifully unique name on the roll before class, use your black eye to see its worth instead of using your American eye to call the persons parents’ ignorant for naming their child that name. The next time you think of beauty, use your black eye to see your beautiful naps instead of using your American eye to define beauty as you pick up that perm box. The next time your American eye tells you that Black struggle is over, racism ceases to exist, and you are equal to every American, ignore your American eye, and give yourself a Black eye.

I Dream of Detroit

I dream of words unwritten;
      In a language where periods need not be dotted
      Where “t’s” need not be crossed-
I dream of dialects unspoken;
      In a voice enunciation need not to be stressed,
      Where infliction is definitions-
Sight through subconscious is unfathomed to the minds eye
Leaving dreams to be safe from
For what can one feel in the absence of a body?
The lack there of? Or the presence of obscurity?
I dream of music unplayed;
      In a sound only heard through script,
Where distance articulates quality-
I dream of things unseen and not to have happened;
      Retention is a curse, and the forgotten is blessed-
But as I rise from once was;
      I’ve lost it all-
I dream of words unsaid;
      Cursed by memory.
      Decided through ignorance.