"Awakening"???...

WHO ARE YOU Black man/Black woman? Knowing our history equips us with "knowledge of self" to understand who we are by knowing who we've been, to know what we can do by learning what we've done, and to learn where we've come from to see where we can go. In spite of the "knowledge of self" Black People have developed a pattern of devolving into useless phrases or meaningless symbolic actions for which we can no longer afford to engage in. I have no faith in emotional proclamations of a phony "great awakening" or such overused clichés like "wake up brother/sister", when so many saying this are still blindly walking in willful ignorance themselves. "Sleep" is a luxury for those who can afford to rest or dream, and for Black People we've lived the "American Nightmare" wide awake with the teasing bliss of the fictitious "American Dream" reserved for all but us. Repetitive rhetoric said in a provocative way flirts with expectations and tickles the emotions of the oppressed but offers no hope.

In my opinion, saying we're "awakening" insultingly infers that out of all peoples in the world Black People are the only group "sleep" for at least the last 1300 years since Asian Arabs began enslaving Black People in Afrika, sometimes with the help of other Afrikans, which eventually led to the unrivaled and brutally inhumane Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade by Europeans. Talking that way to sound profound is a slight to the mental and spiritual condition of Black people as inferior in comparison to others as superior. We don't need to awake to some new religious doctrine or lost history to clearly see the world we live in isn't right and that we are locked in a global battle for the survival of our people without any allies against a racist agenda. We weren't created "sleep", if that's what we are, and if truly sleep then how much louder of an alarm beyond our present condition do we need to wake up? Everybody has something different in mind that we're suppose to wake up too but nobody can agree on what that is. 

The "knowledge of self" is a necessity for our cultural and personal development, but we can't simply remain stuck being proud to say we have it and doing nothing with it. The Black Community's problem is not being metaphorically "sleep" but being deeply divided while not paying close attention to "the clock", nor taking note of key details for the bigger picture of our unified advancement lest we run out of time to get together. Educate yourself Black man & Black woman to empower yourself rather than be stirred by claims of our supposed "awakening" due to pro-black religious dogma or having learned some Black History. Once the truth is made available then ignorance with your eyes wide open on full alert is not sleep, but the indifference of a slave mentality. I've been up, and we don't need to "wake up" but to "get up" and go forward with those who know how to get where we need to be and won't take advantage of us for selfish gain on the way, but will show us the way without getting in our way.  ~ I.J. West 

1st THESSALONIANS 5:5-7; "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. 6) Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. 7) For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night."