Real Talk

A Randy Savage Elbow for Christmas

by JuJuan Buford

It's amazing. Children truly believe their fathers are super heroes; totally impervious to pain or harm. So I'd just finished Christmas dinner and was taking a little nap. All of a sudden the air stands still. My daddy senses go off like alarms, but it's too late.

The child has launched herself from atop a cloths basket that stands a little over 2 feet tall, and drops a Randy Savage elbow on the back of my neck and shoulder.

 

Then as I rollover half dazed, she follows it up with a Hulk Hogan leg drop.

 

The assault completed, she sprints away to the dining room table for a glass of chocolate milk. Of course she would. I mean after such an exhibition of physical prowess, we'd all need a little sip to refreshen ourselves right?

You've got to be kidding me. Fatherhood.

 

 

Random Christmas Ruminations

By JuJuan Buford

Warning. This is not a reindeer story. It is free writing rant.

There are very few things I find more enjoyable than walking through the doors of a business concern in one of our communities. I can recall my last visit to Philadelphia like it was yesterday. A good friend of mine left me to my own devices, and I took a stroll. And I kept strolling.

It was exhilarating to walk block by block and see black enterprise in motion. A small grocery store here; a leather repair shop there; a small accounting firm, adjacent to a small law firm; then a book store…etc., etc.  Notice, I didn’t mention gas station, liquor store, church.

Some, particularly those who are especially, intellectually obtuse may inquire why is that something to get excited about? So, here we go. All of these business concerns were small businesses, probably employing between five to twenty individuals. Each enterprises probably generates between $150,000 and perhaps a 1.5 to 2 million dollars in gross revenues apiece. Let’s say the average income of the owners and employees spanning the couple blocks I commuted on foot was about $30,000 annually. Multiply 8 businesses times 5 employees times $30,000 and you get $1,2000,000.

At minimum.

The importance of the aforementioned estimation seems more telling when you spell it out: one point two million dollars in net income concentrated on a couple blocks.

The neighborhoods that I traced across were not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t see Cadillac Escalades, Hummers, and Mercedes Benz emblems populating the driveways. No, check that, sidewalks. Philly doesn’t have driveways.

However, they were wealthy. Those neighborhoods were solvent. When the children walked down the street they saw African American adults taking agency over their lives, employing those in the community, and most importantly…they saw options.

No doubt many of them probably had jobs, and were simply scratching out enough time to run their independent businesses on the side. That’s the most practical way to do it, in the beginning.

When I looked in their eyes I saw determination, not desperation. One of them told me, “this is how you pimp the system.” I thought to myself, so true so true.

The system wants us to drop out, because prison labor is just another name for slave labor. They want us to wallow around hoping for one of those good paying jobs, whereas we can demonstrate our loyalty by committing 40 hours a week, for 40 years of our lives, and live off of 40 percent less than what was barely endurable at 100%. And then whimper when the lights get turned out just after you’ve bought that new house; ran up $30,000 in credit card debt (you have to furnish the house right!), and you’ve bought that new Cadillac.

Then of course comes the begging for some white knight (for some it’s Santa Claus) to do the right thing. You know whom I’m talking about. Santa DTE. Santa American Home & Loan (fictitious name), Santa U.S. Government, etc,….

People did we not learn the lessons from Katrina?  People this is capitalism, with a little racist icing to add some extra flavor.

Yes, it is Christmas. And indeed, there is so much to be thankful for. After all, Jesus is the reason for the season. And if you’re not Christian, that’s ok too. Any opportunity to spend a little more time with family, friends, and food is definitely something to be thankful for.

And considering the aforementioned, after folks are done herding themselves into and around store counters to spend their precious currency on stuff that will depreciate as soon as it’s scanned… save a little. And dedicate a small portion of it to an idea, an entrepreneurial pursuit, or a book about becoming financially independent.

Trust, I believe Jesus will be glad you did it. Oh, I know, you gotta pray on it, eh?

Right after you scarf down some more turkey and greens, and begin stressing out about how you’re going to pay for all of this isshttt. 

Question? Did you pray before you sprinted into Target? Perhaps you should have.

So many worry themselves about what they may lose. Regrets. Paralyzed by the fear of loss. How about being ecstatic about what there is to be gained? Being excited about the possiblities.... just exuberant about what can be accomplished, and how rewarding it will be to win. I mean really win!

JuJuan Buford

Someone asked. So I'm going to tell it. You want to know why I do what I do? Why I can stare people dead in the face regardless of their socio-economic, academic, or professional credentials and or status without blinking? Why I really don't give a (you know what)!

It's real simple. I believe that good people deserve to win. Ultimately, we, individuals are just dust and shadows. However, the extent that we touch others determines whether we leave behind a legacy, or simply dissipate into the wind.

JuJuan Buford

Some times you have to just look in the mirror at yourself. And just say it out loud. Just be like, damn it! It aint even fair. You just aint right! Now go handle yah business.

JuJuan Buford

I tell you, people are some kind of crazy. All people got a little crazy swirled up in them. That's the issue.

The solution? Labels. People should be forced to wear labels indicating what type of crazy they are. That way before you decide to pick up the jar and take it home, you can read the label and see what you're buying.
Labels.

Then of course there is the issue of the heart being like the stomach. See, it doesn't always want what's good for it. But with labels? At least there would be no excuses.

Labels.

 

JuJuan Buford

A Luis Lopez Story

by JuJuan Buford

I've always found the responses to articles posted online so much more interesting (most of the time) then the actual commentary themselves. 

This one comes from an article posted on the theRoot titled What Do You Call a Black Man With a J.D.? I personally cannot understand where all the surprise comes from...seriously. I understand a little outrage, but come on folks. Death and taxes. Racism and apple pie. Neither set is going anywhere.

If you don't own the store, you can't make the rules. The bottom line is nothing will change...nothing! Until African Americans embrace a philosophy of business ownership and entrepreneurship (moreso than we do now), as opposed to shuffling around looking for work. And then of course patronize our business concerns as vociferously as we patronize others.

The wealthy (those who are in power) create networks (and those networks make the rules), while others look for work (and are made to follow the rules).

Luis Lopez
"I cant believe it. Look at me, I am white as white as white can get. Western European 100%. Caucasian by all ethnic definitions. But - and here is the catch - I happen to have the THREE MOST COMMON HISPANIC names in America. What does this mean? Banks, loan companies, insurance companies, LANDLORDS, credit card companies, potential clients, etc, etc. I lost count of the sort of vile things I have been called and the times that I have witnessed companies violate federal laws that prohibit any discrimination based on race. Just last week I "lost" a potential client in Atlanta because - you guessed it - "I ain't going to hire some Mexican from California to make my website...." So if this can happen to me, I imagine that African-Americans have to STILL put up with this sort of non-sense. Anglo-saxons, specially uneducated yokels from the Heartland, shiver in their shoes at the sight of any minority -real or perceived- that surpasses them in education and intelligence. That is a FACT I can attest to by my own experience. (I have two a bachelors and a masters in my fields btw)"

There aint no future in your frontin. Act like you want it. Suspend pride and fear and put your foot in it. Because you can't steal second, if you won't remove your foot from first base.

No risk - No reward. You don't win Super Bowls with defense and a tight running a game alone. Sooner or later you have to throw the ball. You know what I'm saying?

JuJuan Buford

Ultimately, you have to look into the mirror and make an accounting of yourself: the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, don't let anyone diminish your intrinsic value as a human being. You are what you think of yourself, and what you aspire to be. The world does not benefit from you playing small or shrinking. Be a trojan horse and allow your greatest aspirations, your excellence, your highest, most benevolent thoughts to flow forward.

JuJuan Buford

The New Negro?

posted by JuJuan Buford

This guy goes so hard I had to post his response. It can be found in response to an article, "W.E.B. DuBois' Talented Tenth in Pictures " on theRoot by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

I love it how negroes like Mr. Williams always seem to slip up when refuting perspectives articulated by the individuals below: "lower blacks". Lower blacks... for real?

Of course what is even more interesting, if not nauseating is how African American intellectuals (pseudo-intellectuals to be more accurate) who parrot the nonsense of the talented tenth, seem to exercise convenient ignorance regarding the fact that W.E.B. DuBois recanted his belief in a talented tenth.

Why?

Read below.

icantrememberallofmyaliases 
Dr. Gates,  
 
I see what you are doing in trying to deflect responsibility as if the the Black Intellectuals have done all they could do at this point and that your coterie had nothing to do with sustaining the class divide. I bet now after two years of 'After Obama" and the increase tabulation of results in seeing what the privileged children of Black Boomers have become in being your Black students who talk-the-talk as they were trained to do in show that they will exhibit more and more hubris, you all are scared of what you've created. The forthcoming and emerging young adults are not wanting to balance being cloaked in duplicitious intention to lead the race as prime Establishment-ready Blacks who will continue the schemes they were bred to lead in acting as if they are the next great crusaders when they don't have the heart to. They know to strive to be annoited as recipients to be crowned as leaders of us but they also know they have another agenda that will matter more to their long-term sustainability in a competitive world.  
 
I know they are in your company everyday and it is scaring all of your peers that created this culture that created them who have no intention to close the divide. You all act like you didn't create this but you know you did in allowing your generation to create them...hell, us. (We're just as screwed up.)  
 
These are Black Boomer children who don't have the desire to close the divide and they are don't have the core to really even be good at being two-faced about caring. They are not like the old models of us. They are new models of newer Black People who will too create models of incarnation of themselves. The divides will linger. There will be no resolution for Dubois the way you or most of think we should see it come to be.  
 
This world in the present that they don't care about the ways you do in respecting Dubois' intention does not connect to them the same way. They have jobs to go get and trips to go take and titles to amass.  
 
Black Intellectuals failed. Black Intellectuals from you, Black Boomers to my peers, those minion copy-cats, Black Generation Jones and GenX educators who just wanted to emulate your formulas, all of you created this. GenY Blacks and on are now obsessed with selling themselves. They don't have time to close the divide no matter how much they say it out the side of their necks.

Yesterday, 4:51:55 AM

________________________________________________________________ 

Mr Williams
Blaming Black intellectuals for the woeful performance of lower blacks is unfair and stems from a slave mentality that grips Black Americans. No one not the government, Obama, the white man, or black intellectuals are responsible for your fate, the individual is.

via www.theroot.com

Facebook Ruminations on the War on Black Men

by JuJuan Buford

Yep, this is what happens when you really don't have time to craft grammatically correct, cogent content. You post facebook conversations. Interestingly enough, I find some of them more interesting than much of my own or others choreographed content.  

So here's my response to another exchange. I need to get permission before I post others' responses.

The greatest trick the devil ever played was to convince people he doesn't exist. It's amazing, frightening, and enraging to hear people who share I hue ignore this simple fact, and at times refute it. Forces have made war upon our communit...y from the beginning, and it hasn't stopped. The reason why we (a small portion of us) enjoy some freedoms is because our people sacrificed, scratched and clawed, and died to make today possible. And somehow, we were duped and now parrot the idea that we have arrived when more black men are incarcerated than college bound. Way the F more.

In any war, the invading party kills the men and then the sons first. Why? We were brought here to serve as cheap labor. And because the slavery transpires behind prison bars (out of sight, out of mind) we ignore it. The room for error is so slim for black men (not making excuses, alot of ill isshht that happens black men bring upon themselves), however the room for error is so slim... like a lion chasing a gazelle... one slip and it's damn near game over.

Black men and women have been pitted against each other from the beginning. And it hasnt stopped. The tactics (how it looks and feels) have changed, but the strategy has been the same. Control black men's capacity to earn income and control... them physically. Then demasculate them. It would take a 500 page 8 font doc to outline the tactics employed during slavery. Today isn't much different. Think about how the welfare programs removed black men from the picture. Think about the history of adoption and child protection agencies in this country separating men from households, separationg sons (specifically) from families.

Most of us don't even realize it, but we are being conditioned daily to compete against each other. There's where the internal strife is coming from. Black men and women more than not see each other as competitors, agitators, whereas gamesm...anship (in damn near every arena) rules the day. Think about it..... Affirmative Action benefited white women, white mothers, white daughters, white sisters, white aunts, and white wives more than any other group. That point was made clear and was generally accepted in Michigan. Do you know that white women and men came out in mass against it! Why?

Because they understood implicityly that even if Affirmative Action benefited white women, the fact that white men would actually have to compete on a more level playing field with black men was incomprehensible. Their decision was very gutteral and carnal. Who is my daughter going to marry? Get it? I'm being rhetorical. We have had that gutteral response nearly slapped the hell out of us.

Black women (alot of them) don't want to acknowlege the aforementioned, so there's the loss of empathy. Black men too often don't recognize what black women have to endure, especially in the absence of protection. Afterall, if black men are... removed the equation...what happens? So the temperature rises. And if you are being programmed to be competitors rather than teammates, partners in a struggle, what do you get? What you get is what you're seeing. The divorce rates are not anomalies. The unemployment rates are not anomalies. The lack of marriages transpiring are not anomalies. The friction did not just appear out of thin air. Damn... not enough space. All I can say to our people is fuck... read a book, read a book, read a book. Read our history. Get out of your ignant (ignorant and stupid are two different things) skulls and read about what's really going on. If you don't know the origins (history), it's hard to submit solutions.

Ultimately, the answer is in us... African American men. That's goes for all of us. Me, our peers, our elders, our young ones. The answer is in us. We must start there.

Failing Schools = Profitable Prisons. Period. Exclamation Point.

JuJuan Buford

If you fear something. And let fears become your aim. You'll find a way to make it manifest. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, you will destroy all in your wake down the path.

It's so interesting how the mind works. I've watched complete strangers and those closest to me, simply detonate the best laid plans... so intent on making their worst ruminations come true... they will destroy their own careers, detonate intimate relationships.... It can be in the middle of the day, and they will demand that you agree with them that the moon is up.

They will request your presence, then deny you entrance. Pride and fear are a nasty combination.

Remembering Jody Watley

by JuJuan Buford

The lady in the previous post reminded me of someone. It was nagging on me all day. Then I remembered Ms. Jody Watley. Wow.

 

 Now I'm really upset with that knucklehead.

 

 
 

Why Can't Black Men & Women Get it Together?

by JuJuan Buford

You know what? I don't know. I'm not and don't pretend to be an expert on happy, martitable (is that a word?) relationships. Unfortunately, I can testify more to not what to do, then how African American men and women can get it together.

The divorce rates. The numbers of men and women who have forsaken marriage or long term relationships altogether.... There's no need to review the stats. They are depressing, and depressing and merlot don't go well together.

So why even bother reflecting on this topic? A mature lady with some of the most alluring lips and hips, a stride that no doubt induces men to trip over the crack on the sidewalk, and a way about her that demanded immediate respect shared a piece of her mind with me today. She was very married, and painfully coquettish. CEO of her office and junior partner of her household. Those were her words.

Sista shared that men and women today don't know how to empathize, compromise... don't know how to shut the F up, stop trying to win, and just love on each other. As she shared her perspective a brother passed by straight up booming some of the most vitriolic, misogynist isshttt I've heard in a while. Honestly. I thought to myself you f-ing hater... the magic dissipated... long gone. The frown on her face spoke a million words.

As I drove to my next destination, I listened to the songs (the same lame ass songs) on the radio and thought to myself... dag even our music reinforces this nonsense. I couldn't help but to reflect on Fantasia. Yes, Fantasia. I mean Jill Scott's "He Loves Me" will forever be my favorite love ballad of all time. I mean I don't typically take an interest in Sista's 200 and over... but Jilly from Philly? That song? Rules can be broken after listening to that track.

Still the following lyrics capture something for me. The homage to HipHop and love just resonates right for me.

Cant see me
Without you by my side
So many reasons why
I'm your girl and your my guy
Your all i need
All i need to get by
Like method man and mary blige
You don't have to wonder why.

Fantasia Barrino - "Only One U"

I tell you what I do know. If you have a winner, don't take it for granted. It's a cold world out here. And don't believe the bullishhtt. You let too many get away, and you might be dealing with runaway loves for the rest of your life. And if you don't know what a runaway love is, check a poet out on a Tuesday night at Kuumba's Cove, and MoBettaBluez will break it down for yah.

 

 

 

 

If you are a winner, know that you are winner. And don't let anyone tell you different.

JuJuan Buford

World of Mouth

 

When you give of yourself. Your currency. And others take it as a mere exercise of pitch and toss. It's ok, but only for a minute, to quietly mourn your loss. Learn the lesson and assess the costs. Take your pictures, turn the station, adjust the knob, play a new song, real nice and loud.

JuJuan Buford

 

I gotta find me a new loco-motive, stop makin sad songs

Andre 3000 - Chris Brown's Deuces

Listening to iTunes, too hype to sleep, putting in work. Then Mary J's 411, You Remind Me, starts playing. Dag. Dope album. Great time to be alive.

JuJuan Buford

See What's Wrong With America?!

by JuJuan Buford

See what happens when you mess with Europeans' educational opportunities. You catch Ls that's what happens. You catch Ls buddy.

They straight riot on you. Open up a can of whupa%$ on you. See if U.S. citizens behaved like this, every child would receive a top flight education. Ls buddy.

 Ls dammit!

  

 

For real though, check out this New York Times article. It's interesting.

World of Mouth

 

Is she the lesson? Or is she the one?

Tiffany Hightower