mmoa_writes

My brother is now on his way to Oxford as one of a dozen or so other students in his school. Unfortunately, he's a moody sod so we couldn't congratulate him for fear of him snapping at us. Ah, well: I is very proud.

Jimmy Smith is dead. The black heroes, be they of the literary world, the art scene or the realm of music, are fast disappearing and what do we have to replace them? What do we have to show that we've been inspired by them, that we appreciate them?

*sighs*

Maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic. In fact, I know I'm being overly pessimistic, because there are plenty of original minds out there who are getting their way out to the forefront. It just strikes me as sad that black literature today is mainly made up of already written titles with a different skin tone - where are the Soyinkas, the Achebes? The essay writers, the playwrights?; our music is getting stale (I salute Nas for blasting these 16 year olds who think they're all that but who lyrically, couldn't mash potatoes) and those born outside Africa seem as determined as ever to try and make bigger fools of themselves (dudes, just stop trying, okay? We don't think it's particularly admirable that you want to return to the Motherland, considering it's the Motherland that spewed you out in the first place).

It seems to me we've gotten complacent. We've stopped pouring more waters into our rivers and become stagnant lakes. I'm not talking about the wrongly termed 'Black Pride' thing because I think that's stupid: sure, understand where you're coming from, but you should be proud of what you've achieved, not what you've worked nothing for. You were born with black skin (that's just chromosomes and goodness-knows-what-else), it's not what you put late nights, tears of frustration and sweat into. I'm talking about how we are happy with labels such as 'black music' and 'black fashion'. Instead of trying to expand, we just lump ourselves under these labels in whatever field we're working in and... stay there.

We need to keep on Pushing, because if we don't, then we can't really defend ourselves against the accusations that have and will keep on being hurled at us as a miniority. If we can't prove we're anything but Guns and Drugs (and what makes me laugh is how ludicrous that is - in every single Garage club I or my friends have been to, we've never seen a gun or seen anyone being particularly bad with drugs. You can tell who's on them, yes, but it's rare to find them being sold), well, I think that says a lot about how far we've come.

I stayed up past midnight last night trying to finish three essays. Damn Sex and the City, I was watching it again even though I'd already seen that particular episode. I'm such a sucker...