Israel is at war with Hamas and several other terrorist groups. Ukraine is at war against the Racist Russian Roaches. Our brothers in Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are at war with rebels and insurgents.
And here in the good ole U.S.A, Black America is at war with…drum roll, please…’STUPIDITY!’
Yeah, you read that right. And while our war may be as much psychological as it is physical, it does leave a blood trail—mindless zombies, dysfunctional families, and a community in chaos in its wake.
It is also a war for which humanitarian aid, technical advisors, or new munitions are useless.
What’s more alarming is, we’re losing this war.
For the record, knowledge is power, and the lack of it is ignorance. The refusal to properly utilize knowledge, or the abuse of it, is ‘stupidity.’
Based on that premise, consider the following:
Stupidity is the only noun to describe the young brothers who blame racism for their disingenuous behavior, disregard for laws, and lack of civility.
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I have a grandson who holds membership among the contingency of Millennials who believe they are being profiled because of race.
I’m sure race plays a role in their repeated detainments by police. But the cops wouldn’t pull them over if they obeyed the laws about tinting windows, loud music, and expired license plates.
Don’t give the ‘po po’ a reason to stop you. If you do, you eliminate the rationale for being pulled over and the excuse.
Everyone with common sense is upset with educational apartheid in Milwaukee—the lowest Black fourth and eighth-grade reading proficiency rate in the country, the wide academic achievement gap, and flirtation with the lowest Black graduation rates in the country. Parents not seeking solutions are stupid, as are the 90% of ‘concerned’ Black Milwaukee who don’t vote in school board elections.
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I saw a 27-year-old ‘brother’ on television with 16 (yes, 16!) children who claimed he “took care’ of all of dem.”
The mother of one said the Neckbone sperm donor not only didn’t know his eight-year-old’s favorite color, but couldn’t say where the child went to school or know his birthday.
He also doesn’t pay child support.
Stupidity runs through that entire scenario. He’s stupid for having children he can neither afford nor provide resources or time to.
But it’s a double-edged sword. How stupid are the sisters for having children by this Neckbone?
By the way, the mother of the latest child is named ‘LaPeaches.’ I joked about that until my wife mentioned a sister being upset that her child’s teacher incorrectly pronounced her name: La—sha. No, it’s not pronounced the way you would assume. It’s La ‘DASH’ Sha…dash being a word versus a punctuation mark.
There’s a thin line between being creative—which we are— and being stupid.
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The most shocking result of my wearing a ball cap with a ‘confederate flag’ for a month last spring as part of a ‘cultural experiment’ was that so few people responded with anger or outrage.
But what shocked me most was the response I received walking through a public (government) high school. I was totally taken aback when I asked a group of students what the hat represented. One responded, ‘Yeah, Malcolm X, right?’
That’s not stupidity, per se, but ignorance.
But a teacher who overheard the conversation opened the door for stupidity when she said it’s not the teachers’ fault that the school hosts the lowest reading, writing, math, and science proficiency rate in the state—“everybody knows poor kids can’t learn.”
Yeah, she said that.
She also said in response to a student’s statement that they are not taught Black history, that he (the student) was wrong, “We have an excellent Black history program. I teach it.”
Her qualification for teaching Black history? She said she owned Black art! True story: I published her comment when I heard it.
By the way, the North Division high school teacher (educator) couldn’t tell me who W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, or Frederick Douglass were, leaving me to assume she was teaching that our ancestors were happy-go-lucky slaves, and Tarzan was king of the jungle.
As Malcolm X once said: “Only a fool will let his enemy teach his children!”
We are obviously culturally dysfunctional because too few of us have a historical/cultural foundation to stand upon. And it’s stupid to assume someone else will lay the cement.
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The 93,398 Black Milwaukeeans with common sense remain distressed, frustrated, and angry about the state of educational apartheid in Milwaukee. The stupidity comes in when you look at our voting records. One out of 10 Black folks vote in school board elections. That’s stupidity—and Black self-hatred—with a capital ‘s,’ which is also the first letter of the word ‘slavery.’
The fools and Neckbones who drive through funeral processions are not only stupid, they are disrespectful, uncivilized, and culturally deprived. So are their parents who passed on their stupid genes to their stupid children.
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James, the driver of the car who ‘murdered’ his two sons—Zapaulion and Paul Eison Vinson— epitomized stupidity. And callousness, mental illness, and atheism.
What’s also worth acknowledging is that this Neckbone’s level of stupidity is shared by many brethren who collectively compose an urban terrorist army that has invaded our community.
These Neckbones have altered our driving habits, threatened the safety of innocent residents, and sparked senseless deaths.
Stupidity should lead to imprisonment. Or better yet, hell.
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Continuing to vote in a two-party system that is essentially represented by the two wings on the same bird is stupid.
Maybe you can assume that blindly supporting the Democratic Party, which has a history of racism and apathy toward us, is justified by the alternative. But lacking the courage or common sense to create an independent political party cannot be dismissed by myopia. Instead, it is the byproduct of fear, political impotence, and—you guessed it—stupidity.
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You have to be more than ‘naïve’ to believe Black lives matter among Black folks. Truth is, we don’t matter to anyone, including ourselves. And to believe otherwise is…yep…stupidity.
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It’s beyond stupid to believe there will ever be a time or occurrence when all Black people will do anything collectively. It was a minority who fought for civil rights, school desegregation, and school choice.
Given our history, and even His-story, you have to be stupid to believe you can get all people of any race, economic status, color/hue, or even religion to do anything as an aggregate.
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You could call those of you who gave up the keys to the Freedom Train to liberals and missionaries–thinking they would drive us to the promised land–ignorant, wishful, or even prayerful. But history will note that ‘stupidity’ best describes their decision.
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Anyone who reads this column or knows me by physical recognition or voice know I have nothing but disdain for the noun/adjective/epithet ‘nigger.’
But I won’t condemn those who use it as a word of endearment or to blunt its impact through rebirthed ownership. But it’s stupid to suggest that strategy has worked. Just as criticizing a liberal white or even biracial person for using it is hypocritical, if you get angry at a racist referring to you as one, it proves the hatred connected to the word is still alive and well.
Plus, I have a problem with y’all who say, Jesus, Yeshua was a nigger.
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To assume or hope someone else will pick up that litter in front of your home is stupid. Conversely, not understanding why suburbanites think we are filthy people after driving through our community is, you guessed it, stupid.
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Thinking a teacher is going to teach your child what he or she should have learned at home before entering school is not only stupid but irresponsible and negligent.
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Likewise, thinking your third ‘sperm donor-produced child’ is not traumatized by the absence of his or her father, who didn’t buy Christmas presents when the other ‘fathers’ did is stupid.
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To think someone or something owes you something—food, shelter, and dope money—is not only stupid, it’s insanity.
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Stupidity best describes those who believe their gangsta rap god is more potent than my spiritual one is stupid. And dangerous. I don’t think there is a ‘hell’ in the general sense, but you could end up living eternity on 18th and Reservoir, or 2nd and Keefe.
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You gotta be stupid to believe the missionaries and conservatives (different wings on the same bird) who want to erase or rewrite history and defuse the impact of ‘American apartheid,’ including slavery, are doing so for your own good or that of mankind.
I oppose tearing down Confederate statutes and White supremacist heroes for that reason. Leave them up so we will be reminded of where we came from.
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To those handful of folks who called me ‘stupid’ for seeking out the owner of a $500 money order I found, you need to look in the mirror. Yes, I could have used the money, and given that the money order was not addressed, I was tempted for a microsecond.
But that’s not how I was raised. Nor does it represent my culture.
I saw the money order and immediately thought of my late mother, who once returned to a Pick N’ Save grocery store because the cashier had failed to include a loaf of bread on her checkout bill.
My saintly mother, Rev. Sideena Holt, stood in line to have the clerk add the $2 to her cashier total to ensure her drawer was balanced at the end of the day.
Unlike the majority today, I was raised in a two-parent household, where we praised God and followed His/Her commandments, even as I later embraced and merged my Christian tenets with Kemetic Spirituality and Africentric paradigms. Thus, it was a no-brainer. And to those who think I was stupid, ‘Ya’ll need to reassess where you came from and what you’re teaching your children.
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Lastly, it is utter stupidity to assume 2024 will be any different than 2023, particularly if we continue to do the same old things over and over again. If nothing changes, nothing changes. It’s a simple, proven fact.
And isn’t that the definition of stupid? —Hotep.
“Stupid
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