It Takes a Village.....Not!

What I am about to say should not come as a shock because I have made it clear that I am an individualist, so when I say that I never liked the saying "It takes a village to raise a child," you should say, "of course, that is what I would expect you to say." The truth of the matter is that the saying makes my flesh crawl because it takes the responsibility away from the parents and gives it to the group, the collective. Recently my granddaughter was removed from her school about a month before the official end of of the school year and ever since then, when my daughter runs into parents from the school they ask her for an explanation as to why she did this, as if she owes them anything. They try to tell her that she went about it in the wrong way and that she should take their approach and speak to the teacher or at least make them understand her problem with the school. They all seem to feel that she owes the school an acceptable explanation and they are waiting to hear something that will satisfy their collective conscience. They have suggested that it is the problem of the parents and not of my granddaughter and that my daughter, her parent, has some how taken their child, my granddaughter from the school against her will. They think that they know what is best for her and they feel like one of their children has been taken away from the control of the collective or the village if you will. The village knows what is best for this child and what is best is that she, like each of their own children, learns to grin and bear the below standard education that is being doled out to her. If this school is good enough for their children, it is good enough for her because she is a part of the village, the collective and every Black child is expected to have the same experience or else, how will she feel at home in the village? I don't know about anyone else but, one of the reasons I had children is so I could teach them my values and standards and in the end to teach them to always live by their own values and standards and not that of the village, the collective. The village has voiced its unsolicited opinions to my daughter but she made her decision almost a month ago and they will have to live with it because in the end, it is hers and her husband's sole responsibility to raise their daughter.

Precious is not my story

This week I got into an interesting discussion about the movie "Precious" which I have not seen and really have no intention of seeing it but, I did read the book several years ago as part of a bookclub, which was titled "Push." Some of the folks in the discussion felt as though the people that didn't like the movie or want to see the movie, were coming from a place of fear, fear of being exposed to or exposure of the ugly secrets in our families and communities. For me, it is not a matter of fear, I just do not want to see this movie. I am never uplifted by ugliness. I do not like stories about rape and sexual abuse, it is not entertaining for me to watch these things. I prefer to positive movies, sci fi, fantasies. Don't get me wrong, I have seen movies with sexual violence in them but, given the choice and knowing the story ahead of time, I am making a decision to not see the movie Precious. The book was very short so, they have added a lot of things to the film, and there are just some images, when given a heads up about certain scenes, that I would rather keep out of my mind.

Voting

For me, voting is a powerless and meaningless act, and mind you, I am only talking about myself. Luckily, you can do what you want to in this country, vote or do not vote, it is your choice. I only voted once in my life and I saw the flaw in the plan. Most people do not have the same values as me , so voting for me would be a lose, lose situation and I do not waste my time when those types of odds are present. Recently in a heated discussion, I was informed that since I do not vote in this country, I don't have a voice, and that people like me always want to speak out when things are going wrong. Well the way I see it is that, the people that vote and participant in this system have voted to give their voices to a representative who will decide what they should have. I on the other hand, am free to say anything I want to about this system because I am not sanctioning it by voting to sustain it.

Obama speaks!

What the hell is President Obama thinking? Why does he feel like he should have a private conversation with the children of America? Children do not vote so shouldn't he be too busy fixing the economy, to take time out to talk to our children? I find it very creepy and I don't trust the government at all. The children of America already know to stay in school and to try and do their best so what could he possibly want to tell them that their parents haven't already told them. He is not campaigning, he has already won so it is time to stop all of the town hall meetings and get to work on correcting the mess that is spiraling out of control. I really hope that he is not planning on talking to the American children about service through volunteerism or about the need to get swine flu shots. It seems like a bad and bold move and I really don't like the idea of him doing this.

Post Racial America, what a bunch of bull!

I know everyone is talking about what happened to Professor Gates but, that shit goes on twenty-four seven in America. What has me up in arms is what happened on AOL today when my, I don't know what to call him since he is not married to my daughter, he uses partner, my daughter's partner's article appeared on AOL and all of the wack jobs came out of the gutter to post their opinions. Now instead of discussing his website and the genius idea he came up with, too many people started to express crazy thoughts in their posts. It was clear to me that many of these, what most people call just plain racist, are in reality mentally ill. They have literally lost their minds and the only things that come out of their mouths are ramblings of inferior minded people. They are full of fear and have feelings of being less than, they are desperately trying to hide this from the rest of the world by trying to put other people in their place. They dwell in their own personal hell and they are trying to bring the rest of the world down to their level so perhaps they can finally feel good about themselves. People try to ignore them, kum-ba-yah them and show them the error of their ways but this doesn't work because they have a mental illness and should be treated as such and that might mean institutionalizing them, electric shock or in the worse case scenario, a lobotomy.