a quote for today -

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
-Jack Kerouac

pulled from my friend's page here

i'm a what?

i found out today that i'm a millennial and here's how they pitch to me

the "friend's" response

so i've been making reference to this "friend" throughout this debate
- please note this girl is my bredren whom i respect to the utmost -
this morning my girl clarified for me and I'll share with you cause my girl is on point on her point which i did not clearly/correctly convey (as I knew i would, see disclaimer in initial post) -

as someone who writes on the daily, of course i write about stuff that may not be necessarily drawn from my own experiences. fiction gives you permission to create narratives that aren't derived from your own. that's the essence and beauty of fiction. but: politics aren't fiction. and the obvious problem with artistic license is that it leads to ish like blackface. Jamilah, you're wrong because i do believe that people can talk about experiences that they don't claim but when you're talking about factual experiences that don't belong to you, you have to explain your positionality and you can't turn around and shove your politics down my throat when you're using "Other" narratives to make your point!

my new favorite lyric -

YOU SAY YOU BE THE BLOCK

BUT I'M THE LIGHTS THAT KEEP THE STREETS ON.

happy birthday brother malcom

yesterday malcolm x would have been 83 years old. how i wish we had a modern day malcolm...

here is a clip to commemorate but his message speaks to the previous posts -

continued, thank you for your comments,

sunday sunday sunday, time to think and continue the conversation below -

first, thanks to people for conversing through comments.

if the dilemma i tried to express in the a vs. b format wasn't quite clear, here's a simpler breakdown (though i didn't really want to say it in these explicit terms) -

can white people talk about the oppression of black people?

there are a lot of variations of this question that all boil down to cultural appropriation and the intention one has when purporting to express something that is not organic to their background (that clear?); here another case that's less heated but similarly about culture -

on friday i went to see dylan murray at revival - great show, kid is talented, unsigned but bout to blow. check him out, he's a good kid, been going back and forth to JA for years, teaches english down there and keeps a recoding studio. respect.

i used to watch him sing at open mic night at irie on monday and i remember the first time i heard him i was awestruck because this lil' white bwoy has a voice on him like bob marley is his illegitimate father and when he broke into a track that went like this, "high grade weed a bun' inna de place, plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace" I wondered to myself, 'how many jamaica stamps does a canadian require in order to write a song as authentic as this?' I turned to infamous dj carl allen with this question and asked, "how many times dis bwoy gone a yard?" him say, "nuff," me say, "him sound good bwoy," him say, "trust."

it is important to note the difference in these two examples, but funnily enough i knew that my friend offended by invincible would similarly be offended by dylan as they both presumed to relay an experience that she does not agree is theirs to tell.

now i must add that my mother (whom i respect to no end and is not by any means "militant") was quick to state that she completely understands my friend's sentiment. she sighed and aired her personal worries in immigrating to vancouver in '86; now her child has grown up to close too "white" people and as such would be broken to accept this type of reasonable reasoning.

this is true, i have been relatively sheltered/blessed and i have never been explicitly/personally oppressed by white individuals in my short life in any way that has significantly broken my spirit or impeded my self-development (though my black skin has been trying in my fair share of situations) - that statement does not negate the fact that we all live in a world of white privilege - this truth cannot be denied by most reasonable people, black, white, yellow, purple, red...

here's how i feel - my experience has been that experience is not tied to race. furthermore race is often tricky; these days you can be born in tokyo and raised in luxembourg by kenyan parents and who knows where your allegiance would lie. even more worrisome is that skin and physical traits do not definitively belie one's origins, sometimes they deceive in fact. case in point: i appear "black" but i am half nigerian and half trinidadian (further caveat - indo trinidadian, east indian or south asian by was of the west indies; note that indo trinidadians are outright racist against blacks - interesting experience for me, e.g. my aunts love me dearly but ply me with bleaching cream) ... as such i don't think i could/would write a poem with reference to apartheid... hmmm, maybe that's the point.

either way in this complicated reality i feel that we cannot condemn each other by silencing each other. we can't lord words over each other. we ought to try to understand the full context of our words and use them with the most respectful intention and strive to communicate the part of every experience that is human - when this doesn't work (inevitable), be prepared for an earful.

oh lawd, my friend is gonna read this and tell me i'm a flower wavin, bleary eyed hippie on about, "give peace a chance" but seriously, i mean, c'mon man, give it a chance.