“Life Changes”

“Life Changes”

(That Stand the Test of Time)

By Glenn Peppers                           June 26, 2017 4:50am           

A friend of mine's dad was sitting on the front porch one hot summer night, back in the day, laughing at us kids goofing around kung fu kicking each other, and just being kids. He told us that "One day, you all might not be around each other, or see each other as much when you guys grow older!" 

We asked him why! And he said "Its because people change! Life changes, and life's circumstances begin to move people in different directions!"

My Friend's dad said, "When you're just getting outta high school, you may see most of your friends a lot, living in the same town. Bopping around here and there in the neighborhood, at the corner store, or at the movies, and at parties, etc! 

Then when you're 25 years old or so. Some of you may get married, some will go off to the military!" Others will get run over by a car, or get a job working in the factory, while some of your other friends will play professional football, or go to school to be a doctor! 

Then when you're 45 years old or so, you'll find that a lot of your friends will have moved out of town. Certainly out of the old neighborhood! A lot of people you grew up with, and came along with, you'll lose track of completely! 

Facebook has been a big reconnection link for many of us Baby Boomers! Putting a great lot of older people back in touch with folks we might not have ever seen again in this lifetime! 

I found that as I got older, like a lot of you. I've experienced some of the friends and people that I went to school with have passed on, become crippled and disabled; while others in time have revealed themselves to be Gay, or have switched over to being Muslims, or shown themselves to be Mentally ill! 

While there will always be that one friend who'll appear to be the same old person they were coming along in life when you were kids playing in the mud. 

No matter how many years its been since you've seen them! As life moves along with you and them in it, the surprises are worth it alone!

My friend's wise dad told us that "By the time we reached 55-60 plus years. We'll barely see any of the people we came along with in your younger years! Many of them will have passed on. Or moved out of state!" 

I've found that after almost a lifetime of close and or distant friendships. Some friendships survivor battles will reveal people who were and are alcoholics, cancer survivors and even people who have been suffering with depression! 

Sometimes we may be dealing with a drug habit that we've been fighting since our teen years!" And if this be the case, So What!... That's LIFE People! Things happen! No matter who They are. Good bad or indifferent; They'll still always be my friend! No Matter What!

As I've grown older. I've found a great lot of what my friend's dad said to us that hot summer evening to be true! 

Now in my older years, I have only a handful of friends that I grew up with, knowing them from grade school that I talk to. 

Then there are my life-long friends with whom I still associate with! We may not see each other everyday, but we still  know each other as people from a soul-core perspective! We know where each other's head is at!

As people grounded in wisdom, humor and life, no matter how far we get separated, we always seem to pick up where we left off from the last time we saw or talked to one another! 

God blessed me with friends who know me well enough, to understand my need and want to sometimes disappear, and go off to my quiet space, within myself from time to time!  

I found that by the time you reach 60 years old, you may be in touch with possibly only 3.1 of those people on a regular basis that you grew up with. 

To this day, I still know and love and keep in touch with friends whom I've played in bands with. People I've DJ'ed with, and hung out at parties with! People I've studied the martial arts with, and gone to concerts with! And people I've sat and cried with! 

I still have those friend's I've gone to amusement parks with, and witnessed getting married and having children! And all the while, throughout the years, never losing touch with each other for very long, as we all came along with an Unspoken Old School--Code of Honor! "Friends for Life!" 

Friends are just that! FRIENDS! You don't have to say it out loud! It just shows! It's something that just happens! 

Friends at the movies clowning

Friend's listen to music together! Friend's act a fool and clown in the movie theater on a Saturday afternoon! Friend's will tell you when your pants are flooding way up high, or talk about your old brown ass, out of style tennis shoes in a way that will crack you up!

Friend's chill at home, eating junk food, watching horror movies, or soul train, and sitcom comedies on TV while eating burnt popcorn. 

Then there are those times when friends'll just they sit quietly with you, designing and/or building and making things by hand, together! 

Some people make friends, and along the way discover that God has given the both of you an extended family in the process of living life! 

When you're young, and even many times when you're older. there'll be no need for you to go looking for good friends. 

Life and God will weed out the people around you who really don't care for you; leaving only those frank and honest enough to bust you upside your head with a water balloon. Laugh about it, and take off running! Now that's friendship!  

You'd be surprised at the people you knew growing up who still live in the same neighborhood you both grew up in! Actually that's a good thing!... Its grounding! 

Yet there are people who'll sometimes see you quite often when you go back and visit your old neighborhood, who'll rarely speak to you, for whatever reasons! 

You'll find as you get older, past your middle years, that old girlfriends (and boy friends) who once dumped you back in the day will look all worn out and un-pretty! 

You'll also find that you'll be totally grateful for that teenage Unrequited Crush you had on that girl you thought was so fine! 

You'll be glad that your clamoring heart, and dissed love had remained unrequited once you've seen how "he or she" turned out in their middle years......... With all them darn loud ass, ill mannered grand babies!

I feel that God gives us friends and confidants along the way in life, because as human beings, we need companionship! In our youth, we need peer interaction as children and teenagers, and even as young adults! In other words, As we grow, "We need a CREW!" 

Coming along, all of us needed social interaction as young adults to learn how to get along with all kinds of people! How to work with people, etc! 

But as life moves its mortal timeline along with us, we begin to change! Some of us marry, some of us become hermits. And some of us spend our lives swinging from one relationship to the next. Remember, Life is Our's to Choose! 

As we get older, our immediate friends list tends to become smaller and smaller! It's nothing personal! It's mostly drudged out of availability, time factors! We're not kids anymore! There's work to be done, meetings to attend! You have family; and again, life's many personal changes will come into play! 

As an adult sharing a life, with a spouse or partner. You've began to mold that life for yourself, along with your significant other and your children! 

One thing I have to say, and it is this!..... Remember, if you live long enough. You will be older in life a lot longer than you will be a young person, physically and mentally in this life! 

I've found that one of the keys to living a happier life in our golden years is to learn how to enjoy one's self, every minute of the day! A big ingredient to this formula is laughter! Laughter is Key!

Laughter is Medicine! 

Never be ashamed to be silly; or to be a big kid at heart! Getting older means you have to learn how to work harder at playing harder! You have to work harder at feeling good! And I know I have to work hard as heck to look sharp and stay halfway youthful in appearance, in my AARP years! 

Hey, if something makes you look and feel younger, and makes you feel good, and doesn't hurt anybody including yourself. I say, DO IT! 

Still the fact of our not needing a whole slew of people surrounding us as friends as we get on in years proves one thing. And that is, as surly as you've entered this world alone as an infant. When we leave this world in our twilight years, we will surly exit it the same way in which we all arrived! 
                                            
So learn to enjoy the best friend you'll ever have in this whole wide world today! And that best friend is YOU!

Glenn Peppers

“Jealousy and envy of the enigmatic talents, intelligences and natural abilities (Physical and otherwise) of the Black Male!”

Idris Elba

“Jealousy and envy of the enigmatic talents, intelligences and natural abilities (Physical and otherwise) of the Black Male!”

(We are Real, and we are Here!)

By Glenn Peppers

Jealousy!..... This one thing has been the backbone and motive in just about every hate crime committed against blacks in this country, and the world over! Especially against black males! 

This deep-seeded jealousy and envy of looks, athletic, and intellectual abilities, along with sexual prowess has cost the lives of many a person of color! yeah I said it!

Black Male Sensuality

Number one on the list of mixed ingredients in this primordial jealousy soup for those who abuse and go after you is simple. First they look for, and try to find anything they can to belittle you. Then go after you!... Most times, its an accusation of Sexual Harassment! 

They'll set their ducks up in a row. Gather a boatload of so-called witnesses, and come out of the woodwork after you like a fire brigade to a flaming tower!... Can you say Bill Cosby? But that's a whole other story in and of itself!

Serena Williams

Take for example another situation of Jealousy and Envy of ones blackness! Case in point. Serena Williams! Because her opponents couldn't beat her on the tennis court, they started saying that she was a man, or that she was on steroids, and claiming that she was taking some sort of performance enhancing drugs. Simply because her skills, and her hard earned muscular body makeup and made her into the champion that she is! She earned her championships, honing her skills since childhood, and over a lifetime!

Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder

Then there are the ones who offer dumb uninformed, and black hearted remarks like the ones made by, former sports announcer, and odds maker on game betting during football season, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder! His racist remarks were and are totally inaccurate, and flat out racist! Here is just one of his ignorant comments!......

"The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade...the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid."

Note the words from this former sports announcer, Jimmy the Greek Snyder! This clown had no idea that we were and are, who we are well before we ever set foot in this country! Slave breeding has nothing to do with our genetic body makeup, and gene-pool genetics that stems back thousands of years to Africa! Nor does Snyder's slave-fantasy breeding madness explanation explain how we've generationally come along from the start, in Africa! 

It was Snyder's ignorant ideals floating around in his head, that made they're way out of his mouth that got him fired and kicked off television!

African Man watching as Slave Ships come to Shore

What this man didn't think about was the fact of, why those slave traders chose to take Africans as slaves in the first place. It surly wasn't because we were a weak people! Who travels over an ocean to gather up sick, small, and frail individuals to make slaves out of?... 

These evil men traveled over troubled seas, halfway around the world because we were a strong and wisdom filled people from day one, living in a land, and a climate, and a culture that demanded all our strength, in order to survive and live in mother African! In fact, they were so impressed at our physical makeup that they felt compelled to forcefully take us at gunpoint!

Our biggest mistake and weakness at the time was that we were just not an inherently violent people!

Still, I can hear that tinge of jealously in Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's comments! He hated the fact that some black men even gave the appearance of being physically stronger, and were often times more superior on the track, the court and the field, etc! Therefore, he had to create an explanation in his mind that would satisfy his insecurities.

Any dumb ass theory in order to belittle the black man's performance, and take away even the most remote idea that his God given, and hard earned ingenuity, and thinking skills had anything to do with his or her's earned ability to play (or strategize) a ballgame, or any sport!

Thus in his mind, there had to be a reason (outside of the truth) as to why! In Snyder's mind, a black man just simply could not be a thinking, intellectual individual. Someone capable of deductive reasoning and powerful physical abilities all at the seem time! As if in order to function, a black man had to be engineered by white men in order to be any sort of human physical specimen! 

If that were the case. Then why didn't (or couldn't) they Engineer their own kind into their so called, Perfect Race?

This deep-seeded jealousy over the black male's physical attraction to white women, and penis size, has caused an unspoken hatred of the black man to fester in america for almost two and half centuries!

The seeds of this kind of jealously is what made white men destroy an entire town of Greenwood, Oklahoma in 1921. 

Black Wall Street after whites destroyed the town, killing hundreds

Charred remains of a black man in Greenwood, Oklahoma after the attack

A town nicknamed, Black Wall Street because of its lucrative black community built by blacks just outside of WWI! Greenwood, Oklahoma. An entire town, wiped off the face of the earth, and simply because within Greenwood, black people literally owned their own community, and all manner of businesses within it, such as an airport, a hospital, supermarkets, and cleaners and city block after city block of well constructed homes and new cars, etc.

Jealous hearted white men created a lie that concerned a black boy assaulting a white woman. This is a commonly created excuse for white men to form a mob (a posse), and from there then start a riot, and set out to kill someone!  

So as a result of this lie. These angry white men formed a mob and set out to kill thousands of black men, women and children, all within a 24 hour period! Burning, bombing and destroying close to 10,000 homes and businesses. 

This included any and all structures that sat on any black property! in the process they killed (gunned down and burned) and injuring hundreds onto maybe even thousands of men, women and children in one day and a night.

This jealousy and Envy went even as far as bombing the Greenwood from the air with an aerial attack! And all out of mere Jealousy, Greenwood, Oklahoma became America's first domestic terrorist act, committed by white men, and executed on american soil! 

This was, and still is considered to be america's most flagrantly bold genocidal act of war and hate crime put against black people in american's unsung history! 

A history that has been swept under the carpet, and kept quiet! Until recently!

There are maybe only a handful of people still alive who can attest to this shameful act! It was as if these people were supposed to stay alive for this long in order to tell the story, firsthand of the inhuman carnage done to black folks back in 1921, because of this Green Eye'd monster called, JEALOUSY and Envy! Combine this evil with hatred and you have an explosive combination! One that ends in death!

Police Brutality byway of a choke hold!

This jealousy has shown itself in many ways since we've walked the gangplank off the slave ships, onto this place called america! This jealousy reveals itself through Extreme Police Brutality, and a host of many police killings of all kinds, down to simple school yard fights with kids whose parents have taught them how to hate children of color in their classrooms. Right down to the burning of a young man's body by a gang of jealous whites. All simply because he had good looks, and athletic skills!

When it comes to the many varied forms of discrimination and hate, white males show themselves to be the true purveyors of FEAR and the evil emotion of Jealousy! The truth and frankness of this matter has always been, Hush-Hush and Unspoken in america! 

In fact Jealousy of the African male descendent in this country is a topic that is long unspoken and unchallenged. Yet the results and consequences of this passionate jealousy has cost people of color much over the last two centuries! That being the lives taken of thousands of black men, women and children, as a result. This makes the reality of such an unsung thing, quite real indeed!

By Glenn Peppers

In the words of Jesse Williams....

“Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real."

                                                                                             4-21-2017    1:45 am

“There is no Better Teacher than The Holy Spirit!”

“There is no Better Teacher than The Holy Spirit!”

                      By Glenn Peppers                                                                     May 7, 2017 6:10am

I've found this to be so true! The Holy Spirit has been for me, The Bringer of much Divine Knowledge, and has been the one true source of supernatural, and infinite knowledge to that mortal degree on which humans are allowed!

Always a gentleman, and never pushy or exploitive. The Holy Spirit takes time with you. Let's you grow, and is patient with you in your young years as you develop, allowing for our normal human faliures and complexities of life, and human error, and life's temptations. Even as God brings us along in our many victories in life!

It is byway of the Holy Spirit that I as a young man began to understood what it meant to grow into the knowledge, of the things of God! Byway of Jesus Christ, these and many other Life Lessons, and Life Trials and Life Experiences I got through because of that still small voice inside me called the Holy Spirit that God gifted me with. Carefully, and inconspicuously guiding me with his ever present spirit that protected and encompassed me, and even sent along Angels to me when needed!

God reached in more times than I will ever know to pull me out of sickness, mortal and personal danger, my own foolishness, and a sea of heartache and loss that stalked and lurked just outside of my mortal sight on more occasions than I could ever expect! Hey! One things for sure, I ain't perfect!

Most times I'm not a very good example of what a Born Again Believer should be! I think overall I have a huge angels heart! I cuss too much! And I am the biggest-childish older adult you'll ever know! But regardless of my immaturities, a great lot of the time, I am right where I am supposed to be in the Lord!

Face it, if I had to be perfect before coming to to the Lord, what would I need the Lord for? Where I lack, he forgives! Where I fall, he helps me up! When I become hardheaded and want things my way, even though I know God's way is better. He waits me out, and never says, "See! I told ya so!"

But more than any of the many rescues, and the Life Lessons, it is the wisdom, and the Comfort that God imparts onto me byway of the Holy Spirit that I feel most often! One thing is for certain, God will turn you into a scholar! If not anything else, He demands that you read! That you study! That you learn! God is a God of Intelligence, and logic! Look around at his many creations throughout the Universe and tell me this isn't so!

One Minister I came along when I was a young man use to say that, "You may not be a reader before you become Born Again. But you'll sure become one afterwards!" He called this "The School of the Holy Spirit!"

And believe me!... This is one school that exemplifies the phrase, Life Long Learning! And if you remember being in school and enjoying it, you know and remember that Learning was and is Fun! Being in Love with God, and his loving Spirit, and his Wonderful Son is a Life Long Journey, and learning experience! A journey that will teach you more about yourself than you'll ever dream. Getting to know God will be a journey that will bring you closer to him everyday, byway of his Holy Spirit! In just a short time, you come to know that getting to know God is a Learning Adventure that you'll carry with you on into eternity!

Glenn Peppers

“So if you’re Intelligent, you’re acting White?”

“So if you’re Intelligent, you’re acting White?”

By Glenn Peppers

Know your Roots People! How often have you heard one young black child tell another young black friend or student, “If you’re intelligent. Or if you’re smart, you’re acting white!” 

I say stop letting greedy, ignorant record companies and the people behind them, fueling these messages who mean none of us any good, from telling your children that being intelligent and speaking well means that you're acting White! 

To put it plainer, you are simply being what you are! You are being Black! In fact, you are being more Black than you’ve ever imagined you'd be! The trend of infused ignorance within black culture has only existed within our youth’s culture basically for only 30 some odd years, on a large scale! 

Largely, black people have always maintained a level of calm, poise, innovativeness and intelligent creativity. Even through times so hard through era's like Jim Crow that such trials would  destroy and break young black teenagers of today!

Our people down through the ages have always been great orators, speaking clear and articulately, like James Earl Jones, and Roscoe Lee Brown and Ozzie Davis and William Marshall! We gave the world advanced math and produced great mathematicians, and libraries and universities in Africa, yet those accomplishments  would only be stolen and copied, and African ingenuity and great advancements in science and mathematics would be taken over by the Greeks! 

We are now, and have always been scientist, astronomers, agriculturalist, inventors, builders, etc! We were, in many ways, and still are the soul of this world's major intelligence and technological advances in everything from music, art to the medical arts, and have played a huge role in every form of technology from the invention of light bulb, refrigeration down to the invention of scores of tools and everyday home and work utensils, to being the technological backbone of all wireless communication. 

All the way to a newly discovered, quietly squelched secret crew of incredible genius black women, working at Cape Canaveral space center in the late 1950's, early 1960's as living breathing human computers! Literally charting the math necessary for astronauts to travel into and out of space! And all on a completely hush hush, unsung level at NASA!.... This was until recently until the revelation of the story of “Hidden Figures!” A book and a major motion picture was released in 2016!  

So if you and your children are talented,  and filled with wisdom and intelligence, or are articulate and communicate well. Believe me this is not a fluke! 

It is not a bad thing or something to be ashamed of, (as those who'd like you to believe) who pump that Rap Rot into our children's heads tell your children everyday, using Rap Music to convey the program! This is what you tell your kids, night and day!........

You tell your children this one true fact!........... “Knowledge and Intelligence is Your Birthright!”

All you parents out here!... Listen and pay attention to how these rap songs of today have dumbed down the level of our children’s everyday communication skills! Skills needed in order to get along in a global world filled with people of all cultures and colors! 

Show your children the Arts

Following this ignorance has set our children aside so to speak, and put them on a second string playing bench! In fact, on an all together different shelf! Because of this. In some schools, there are some black students who have compound issues, and  are misunderstood, functioning on a level no better than special education! They are tagged and deemed as, uneducable! They do not need anything further to hinder their learning processes!

Employers are either threatened or confused and confounded by the audible dialect, lack of comprehension skills, and the consistent mispronunciations of even basic words by youth applicants at job interviews, and job fairs! And these are not only white employers who've complained. These are black employers and companies! 

So how did they pull this whole "Flip the Script on Intelligence" thing on black culture?... Please excuse my crude culinary analogy, but here's my shake on how some of it was done! 

Let's say, if I wanted your Roast Beef  dinner (like white culture wants soul and jazz music for their own). And I wanted to take your roast beef from you. I’d tell you that your roast beef was nasty, and that it is un-cool, unsexy, and just old fashion to eat Roast Beef! I’d then offer you some cheap manufactured Sweet Chicken Chow Bites (i,e. Rap Music in place of your Soul and Jazz Music. And a dumbed down intelligence program), and tell you that the Sweet Chicken Chow bites is better than your old dried up old Roast Beef! 

And that if you eat Roast Beef (speak well and be intelligent and listen to soul music, etc), you’re just trying to be like an Older White Person, eating all that brown gravy and well cooked potatoes, and carrots, and celery, and onions and all that darned well seasoned meat! And listening to all that out of style Muddy Water's and Johnny Lee Hooker blues music. I'd tell you. "I mean really, who do you think you are?”

So how would I really pull this off?

"I’d drill into your brain my now deceptive little Alternative Fact that you and anybody else around you would be cool for eating Roast Beef! My motto would be, 'Here!.... have some Sweet Chicken Chow Bites! Now you’re cool! Now you’re acting black!' 

And then you'd go for it, hook line and sinker, and BAM! Just like that, I've got ya! And all the while, you're not even thinking for one moment that your new Main Thang of the Sweet Chicken Chow Bites has all the GMO, Chemicals and many  Nitrites, and MSG Preservatives loaded right into it! 

Your Sweet Chicken Chow Bites will have More chemicals in it then it will have actual food! And all with Chemical names you may not even be able to pronounce! No matter how smart you are!" 

So there, I’ve convinced you and your children that that healthy, all natural food called Roast Beef and Potatoes is just not cool, and is bad for you! But in its place, you’ve got you some Sweet Chicken Chow Bites! Because as the ad says, they’re Sexy! 

Of course my ad would have half naked dancing girls, and a platter full of Sweet Chicken Chow Bites, being sampled by a beautiful Carl's Jr. type model, chowin’ down on some juicy Sweet Chicken Chow Bites! See!... Makes you want to throw out your Sunday Roast Beef already, doesn’t it?

Think about it! How would I keep you from knowing or believing the truth about yourself,... Especially in this matter?....... I'd project and tell you the complete opposite truth of yourself in order to keep you confused! 

And from there I can keep you dumbed down and out of the running for most anything in life! You'd almost never get into to a decent college! All my cohorts in industry and business will see and hear you coming before you walk through the doors! We'll know you by the way you speak! They way you dress. And by your lack of Communication skills and your lack of Intellect! 

Introduce your children to the Joy of Reading!

I'd dress up the whole Sweet Chicken Chow Bite culture that I created in fake-fashion, sexy videos, and even drugs! We'd even let you think that you created Sweet Chicken Chow Bites! Just like you thought you created that whole idea of Saggin'! 

But mainly, and chiefly, I'd drown you with Sweet Chicken Chow Bites and laugh all the way to the bank as I listen to my new found genre of music that I stole from you, in soul jazz and funk. I gave you the rap, and we kept the soul of your music!

And this I'll do all  while I eat your discarded Roast Beef dinner with a glass of nice red wine! Out of sight and view of you, up in my ivory tower! 

Still laughing all along at just how easy it all was, that through your music, I jacked your entire culture; and as far as true history goes, the very idea of letting you know who you really are would be totally out of the question! 

Why, you'd only tell your Children Otherwise! Raising their awareness factors! Instilling Intelligence and Self-confidence, and competition for me! I can't have that now can I?

"I must therefore always hide the truth from you and your children, at all cost!"

Explore histories hidden from you! Know thy self!

So what does this mean people? It means that we have to be more pro-active with our lives, and the lives of our children! We have to tell our children the truth about who they are! 

We have to teach and educate our own children! We have to awaken and hone their talents, and nurture and cultivate the Wisdom of the Ancients that lives within our young. and within us all!  

Glenn Peppers                                                 April 4, 2017 4:33am

“They say They don’t see Black when They see Me!”

“They say They don’t see Black when They see Me!”

(Embrace who I am.... I certainly do, so why can’t you?)

By Glenn Peppers 

People are so fake with that, "I don't see color!" BS, and that "You shouldn't focus on color, because I don't see you as a black person... I see you as a person!" That’s so much BS! Why? Because, when I am somewhere white people think that I shouldn't be, all of a sudden, I'm black! 

Or whenever you get pulled over by the police, and you're shot, even after you've complied to show them your ID, as you reach for that ID, they shoot you dead! You're automatically black at the drop of a hat, if you're wearing a hoodie! 

You are exclusively, and especially black when and if you try to attain any kind of credit, or buy a home in the suburbs, or any gentrified area of any city in america. To do so, all of a sudden you're considered to be, Scary Black! Suddenly now, not only are you black, but you are someone to be feared! And you haven't done anything at all to even be considered a threat!  

To get you to a place where you will deny your own color and culture, is a divisive way to get you to separate yourself from your heritage, your ancestry and of course yourself! It is the fearful, insecure racist' way of trying to white-wash and erase our history, and sin of slavery, and the many years of mistreatment of black people in america, as if any of it had never happened at all! 

Your denial of self makes the racist and moderately bigot’ed everyday racist feel comfortable! It excuses him or her of their ancestral guilt of murder, cruelty and the ungodly bondage and enslavement of a an entire race of human beings! 

Thus over the years, inserted buzzword phrases like, "Angry Black Man!... Angry Black Woman! And Black on Black Crime!" were created, to make out as if our pain and suffering somehow is invalid and didn't matter! Thus why the phrase, "Black Lives Matters" bothers so many white people! Because if anyone ever thinks that the lives of Black People ever matters, then that would in fact acknowledge that what has police killings, hangings, and universe of injustice stomping our necks that have happened to us, past and present was and is indeed dead wrong! And they couldn’t have that, now could they?

So the phrases, “All Lives Matters” came into being in order to downplay and further wash over the fact that millions of innocent black lives were are are being taken out byway of the same cruel murderous spirit that burned churches in the south, and killed Emmett Till, murdered Martin Luther King, and prompted Dylan Roof to shoot down a 9 member prayer group, in a weeknight prayer meeting, that he willfully attended on his own, and partook of before gunning them down in cold blood! This is the spirit that wants to try and rub out that visible stain of evil put against black people, as if getting us to deny ourselves would make it all disappear!

Then when these terrible injustices happened to black people as a result of hundreds of years of hate crimes, all manner of murders, church burnings, untold shootings, car and truck dragging’s, skinning, gutting, hangings, beatings, intentional drug infusions and infestations into the inner cities to create genocide, water poisonings with lead, water shutoff's, record home foreclosures, and rampant gentrification and black homelessness; on top of all this, we are almost always asked to deny who we are by trying to convince themselves, and us that they do not see color when they see a black person! As if this denial would suddenly make the last 700 years vanish into thin air! 

Then after all that we've suffered, for hundreds and hundreds of years in America, whenever these things are done onto us, we are always the ones asked to turn the other cheek and forgive!

So let’s add things up! In the last 60  years or so, all the marching hasn't really worked! Protesting only gets you teargas'ed and tazed, and rubber bullets from riot shotguns! Since Selma, we’ve been beaten, hung for trying to vote, and in some cases, burned alive! The laws passed in government granted civil and voting rights are eventually reneged upon! 

Out of the abyss, rebel rousers like Donald Trump come along and incite a whole new breed of racism into american culture, that is a throwback of blind ignorant hate in america that existed well over 75 years ago! This form of hate has become the gasoline on the fire intolerance!

So, as black people, what do we do! Where does this impasse take us? Do we keep marching for nothing? Do we just sit back and watch as those who hate us, pick us apart bit by bit? Do we boycott? Do we use our monies more wisely, supporting only enterprises that support us? 

In the meantime, do we make our constructive demands firmly, and meaningfully, come what may? There comes a time when you can no longer sit back and take the abuse! When will that time come for you, in your mind? And when that time comes, what will you do? I’m hoping that you will always know who you are, and who you will become as a result of standing up for yourself, and for your people!

Glenn Peppers  3-5-2017                           7:30am