Just Genius

“Genius and stupidity never stray from their respective paths; talent wanders to and fro, following every light.” - George Moore

Q: "How many color lines are there?"
A: Well ... I think there's an infinite amount of color lines.
My working definition of color here would have to be: that which is visually indicated through the eye ... and everybody has a different lens. The line is personal discretion, the point where we seek to devalue the worth of one thing over another or differentiate things from other things or ourselves from other people when everything is essentially a part of (to borrow from Paulo Coelho) "The Soul of the World."
DuBois' Color Line was simply black and white (as most color lines are monochromatic). Today most social theorist who discuss racial color lines have also adopted the "color of money" line into the conversation of race and class issues such as William Julius Wilson in his book, The Declining Importance of Race, which proposes that the only color that really matters is green and it even suggests that those of stereotyped racial groups transcend the barrier of race if they are green enough (doesn't mean they care about the environment). Regardless of the Color Line(s) that one is familiar with, the problems they promote can be best summed up by Frederick Douglass in his essay 'The Color Line':

When we see color that supports an image we wish to paint of ourselves rather than recognizing the array of colors our painted selves already embody ... some on opposite ends of the color line(s) spectrum, we subject our judgments to the disorder which confirms the non-conferable and pushes redemption further away. Some people look at everything through a 300mm lens losing everything in the periphery of their microscopic gaze. Every judgement is temporal. In allowing the perception of the colors others see we can move beyond the color line to recognize that the tiny speck of color that exists in others also exists in ourselves and as a part of this global community, we are all a part of the same painting.

This quote has been with me a while and it still resonates. It's hard for anyone to live on the ever changing plane of reality and be the same person they were yesterday or expect to be the same person they are today tomorrow.

“This isn’t a tale of heroic feats. It’s about [lives] running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams. Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty? Were our conclusions too rigid? Maybe. Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me anymore, at least I’m not the same me I was.”

- Ernesto “Che” Guevara The Motorcycle Diaries

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I woke up early this morning on the darker side of the color line thinking about transubstantiation...bread and wine. The thought entered my head somewhere between thinking about Obatala and overflowing cups. It was all around me. Listening to Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man" (cause I've come apart ... but Trouble Man don't get in my way ... I've been a real man) while journeying through the hyper links of wikipedia that led me through the Christian holy sacrament and the philosophical meanings of  "substance" ... what something is in itself.

A. I found myself positioned in front of a polluted puddle where I could see myself reflected then I was in myself, seeing through my eyes, I can recognize my own space.

B. It was dark ...pitch black, the beginning of the end ending in a beginning again.

They killed the father,
Murdered the son.
Where there once stood three -
There now stands one. 

Some were hung for trying to assimilate the ideas and principles of America with the life inherited from the African Diaspora. Others allowed the bullet of homogenized existence to ricochet through their bodies … leaving them an empty shell, void of any substance believing their condition as a black man to be a human stain.

This is for my brothers who wanted retaliation when the acculturation, assimilation, and annihilation of their medial shadow became too much. This is for my brothers huddled in masques, kneeling at alters, reading in temples, meditating at home, being miseducated in schools and in streets -- waiting, praying, hoping, learning, and drowning in despair. This is for my brothers, my brothers everywhere.

This is for my brothers scared to be reflected in another brother's essence, shadowboxing invisible ghosts embroiled in fears of social construction - disowned property eloping with noose, devouring assimilation's golden fruit grown from rotten roots, embracing the blood-stained grain as truth. The danger my brother is only to you.

This is for my brothers who have acknowledged their shadow, watching it grow on the way to the sun … the natural political economist, socio-anthropologist, and philosopher that's grasped the visible relation of double consciousness steeped in a heap of deception and pseudo events fed to those seeking life and bread, brothers who screamed “give me liberty…” and ended up dead, my brothers willing to activate their mind state, unwilling to acculturate - endangered are you.

This is for my brothers convinced the only option is to run a ball or minstrel as stars to feel whole. This is for my brothers incarcerated for stealing their due piece of the pie and for younger brothers who now view time spent in correctional facilities as first rights. This is for my brothers who have misused and abused our women because all the beautiful images of them have been destroyed. This is for my brothers purposely denied of tangible fruit - for my brother, how well Danger has made you aware of its plan to annihilate you.

This is for my brothers everywhere.

-Sincerely Genius

1st edition. Still in the editing stages...

Perhaps the greatest understanding is that the Black Arts Movement is something that has already happened. We, the Black Children of the 80's, are the culmination of the direct understanding of that which had just previously occurred. There is no neo-movement, rebirth, or resurrection of the forgotten but we are involved in a conscious continuation of the present progressive. And with this collective understanding ... we create, not in a vacuum but in relation to whom we have been created to be. Walk on. Liberation is no longer a sought after idea (or ideal existence), it is an innate and tangible reality that we must work towards embodying and exalt in the hard won sense of the limitlessness of our freedom and cultural identity.