Let's be really loud and clear here.  At least one primary objective of the Second Amendment was to protect the rights of armed gangs (they call them militias), not all civilians.  If you seriously study the history, you will find that although the amendment was ratified in December of 1791, the major authors of this amendment were originally, James Madison, and finally, Thomas Jefferson.  You see, old Jeff was a racist to the core and a foul and terrible man, but I can't deny the fact that he was certainly a visionary.  He knew that chattel slavery as an institution, where Africans were forced to be the property of whites for 350 years, would someday come to an end.  He also knew that much of the Southern way of life was built around and dependent upon this cruel and inhuman slave system.  So, in order to try and insure the security of the union, he wanted to create an amendment that would insure that the South's racist way of life would be protected.  

For serious students who study this question, you will find that Madison's original version of the Second Amendment said "security of a free country."  This would make sense because the U.S. had fought a war for independence against Britain just a few years before that, so it's reasonable that since the U.S. was now a nation, the amendment would be written within a national context.  So, the question is, why was the word "country" taken out and substituted with "state" as has been the case with the Second Amendment since 1791?  The answer is Jefferson reworded the amendment to say "security of the state" because he wanted to insure that when slavery did end (which it did as a legal institution 72 years after 1791), that Southern states would have the legal right to protect their political and economic stronghold over African people.

This was exactly what happened when slavery ended as the plantation industry capitalized on the verbiage in the Second Amendment to hire those armed gangs I spoke of in the first paragraph. The sole purpose of those gangs was to go out and terrorize free Africans into staying on the plantation.  These armed gangs were big business.  Any sane person can understand why.  Large numbers of Africans were in a huge hurry to get as far away from the South and the horrors of chattel slavery as they could.  People came together.  Wagon trains were established and people struck out to go North, West, anywhere, that wasn't a Southern plantation.  This mass migration threatened to destroy the plantation industry which was the foundation of the South's economy.  So, these thug gangs were hired to go out and terrorize these innocent African people into turning around and heading back to the plantation South.  During this time, the Northern cities had a fewer number of free Africans, but there was fear among the white populations of these folks settling near them, so City Watch groups were established and these groups were able to successfully use the Second Amendment as shield to justify their gun terror against African people.

So, with this type of history in this country, it's no surprise that white people in Houston plan to march in the 5th Ward African community with assault rifles, supposedly to protest their right to carry and own weapons.  Don't confuse my message.  If you are expecting an anti-gun message here, that's not my point.  I don't believe guns should be as easy to acquire legally as they are and I think the fascination with guns in this society is dysfunctional and extremely dangerous, but since all the people who seem to want to do harm to people like me have guns, I'm forced to take side with Gil Scott Heron's famous lyrics: "when the other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine!"  In the meantime, I'm definitely a gun owner, but I'm also an African so I can't ignore history.  White supremacy and capitalism, hand in hand -always - project this image to everyday people of all races in this society that African people are violent and must therefore be contained.  Most white people, who know absolutely no African people, or at least don't interact with us on any type of regular basis, believe this programming.  Examples are recent rants by idiots like Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling.  As much as many white people want to pretend otherwise, those two aren't exceptions.  It's just with social media, dysfunctional views and practices are much easier to expose now.  So, this is the perception that is dominant in this society today.  In fact, since white supremacy is universal in it's application by the capitalist system, many Africans believe that our people are more violent and therefore shy away from visiting our communities ;under this fear that something will happen to them.  This is amazing when you think about it because although our youth are subjected to intense security in inner city schools, it's the white suburban schools where shooters keep shooting and killing civilians.  While our communities are besieged as unsafe, it's malls, restaurants, and university campuses that are turning into some of the most potentially dangerous places you could visit.  So, there's no question that the main source that people should be worried and fearful about is this same capitalist system that is promoting all of the backward propaganda in the first place.

So, we aren't mad at white people for being afraid.  We will encourage conscious white people to talk to your kith and kin.  You people are fools if you think we are going to let you intimidate us with your guns.  Those days are long over.  We have guns just like you do and many of us, because of the brutal conditions that capitalism has forced us to live through in these inner cities, have experience using them.  More experience than your fantasy fascination has afforded you.  So, the best thing that can happen is that you take your focus away from us because we are not the people causing your pain.  It's the capitalist system you need to be angry with and once you get over the anger, then you need to start organizing to create better conditions for everyone.

As for us, African folks have seen this movie too many times to be confused.  The majority of us understand quite clearly that the Second Amendment, the constitution, and everything associated with it was not written to protect any of our interests.  We also understand that the National Rifle Association is a racist organization that stands for gun rights for white people.  This is illustrated by their support for the racist Mulford Act in California in 1967.  This was the law that was generated and passed specifically to stop the Black Panther Party from carrying weapons in their police patrols in the Bay Area.  These young African women and men were carrying guns to confront police terrorism in our communities.  They were carrying them legally and the NRA and the state government conspired to stop them.  So much for the right of very citizen.  

The truth is that we know that many of these gun toting white folks only support gun rights as long as they are the only people that have them. I've been to too many shooting ranges and my skills are good enough that I have seen the looks I get when I'm there with my Malcolm X, Huey Newton, or Che Guevara tee shirts.  I frighten these people.  Whether they admit it or not, I've seen that look my entire life.  So, we Africans know.  For you white people who really want gun control, we can tell you how you can get comprehensive gun control overnight.  Just start arming African people with assault rifles and the laws will come tumbling down with the same precision that the sun follows the moon.

Coming from the inner city environment I grew up in, the messages I got early on were the strong man is the one who can dominate physically.  This definition was basically true whether we are talking about a fist fight, sports, or even interacting with women.  This defined "strong" man would never cry...That was "for girls."  Instead, my father, and every other man I encountered, reinforced to me that a man never showed pain because that was a sign of weakness.  I don't think I ever fully agreed with that definition of strong, even as a young boy, but I did recognize the truths within it.  For example, I knew that displaying the inability to fight back would never work.  It would always be interpreted as a sign of weakness.  I'm not saying that refusing to physically fight is weak, I don't believe that.  I'm just saying that had anyone taken that approach where I came from, you wouldn't be walking the Earth for very long.  Your unwillingness to fight wouldn't stop your aggressor, it would encourage them.  No, you had to push back as that was the basic rule for survival.  So, I thank my father and others for teaching me that, but I guess I realized all along that this alone could never be enough to constitute the type of man I wanted to be.

As I've gotten older and more experienced, I've learned quite a bit about this question of strength.  So much so that I think I have a pretty cognitive definition for what a strong man should look like for me now.  But, before I give my definition, I have to disclose that my definition, like everything else that happens in this society, is conditioned by the capitalist system which places profit before people.  This is a critical component because the value structure that comes with that type of objective permeates everything we do.  This is the only way they can get us to cooperate with their agenda because we all know money shouldn't be more important than people, yet we try to co-exist daily with this backward ideology and practice.  So, it's important to state that and understand how much this reality influences our abilities to develop healthy and productive ideologies and practices, because it does.  Whether you know it or not, it does.  So, on to the definition of the strong man...

I believe that a strong man, the man I continue to strive to be, is the guy who learns to be in touch and acknowledge his feelings.  He knows when he is afraid, angry, upset, and sad.  He doesn't try to deny those feelings or pretend they don't exist.  Instead, he fully embraces them and tries his best to work through them in as healthy a way as possible.  This means that when he is afraid, he knows it, but the difference with this man is he doesn't let that fear stop him from doing what is right.  He finds the strength to deal with that fear and continue forward, working through the discomfort.  He does the same with the anger and every other emotion.  And in doing so, he admits his errors and shortcomings and he tries to move forward and become a better person.  If he follows this path in a sincere fashion, he will develop into a leader which he knows is accurately defined as a person who stands in front, beside, and behind the people, sometimes all at the same time.

I have to admit that I fall far short of reaching all of the objectives I've indicated above.  I've admitted in past posts that my personal struggles have caused me to fall short, particularly in the area of relationships.  I'm deeply ashamed of this because  these behaviors have hurt good people, good women to be precise.  I believe a major part of doing this work is recognizing the flaws in the male models that I use for emulation.  For example, I have come to realize that all of the men that have served as personal inspirations for my life have all fallen short in the area that I want to improve in - relationships.  This may prove controversial to some, but it remains ill refutable.  El Hajj Malik El Shabazz - Malcolm X - has served as my ideological father for 35 years.  I've studied everything I could ever get my hands on about him.  I've physically traveled the pathway of his life, going to Omaha, where he born, Ghana, where his political consciousness expanded, and the Audobon Ballroom in Harlem, where he was assassinated.  I've emulated his personal model, deciding as a young man to not smoke or drink.  Becoming disciplined in the way I envisioned Malcolm being and everyone who knows me knows this.  Still, I have come to realize that Malcolm may not have been the most democratic when it came to decision making with Sister Betty and I need to reconcile this like I have embraced all of his other practices.  Ernesto "Che" Guevara, is another long time hero of mine as is Fidel Castro.  Both of these men and their revolutionary credentials are unquestionable, despite imperialism's continued underhanded attempts to destroy their legacies.  Still, neither of them, especially Che, can be described as the most democratic man when it comes to relationships.  In tact, Che's treatment of his first wife Hilda, was nothing short of disgraceful in many ways.  The same has to be said of other men I've looked up to like Huey P. Newton and Marcus Garvey.  In fact, Huey probably even put his hands on women.  None of the above takes anything away from the political contributions of all these amazing men, but if I am going to work on improving my male model, I have to take into account that my role models had shortcomings in the area I need help in.  I can't necessarily look to them in this area.  

I have a lot of work to do on myself and a lot of work to do in this world.  I'm going to continue to speak truth, especially when it's unpopular.  And, I'm going to continue to struggle to live truth to the best of my abilities.  I will apologize for any hurt I've caused in the past and do the best I can moving forward.  I'll continue to push back against this physical domination model for men.  I'm going to permit myself to cry at the drop of a hat if I need to express my feelings.  I'll continue to speak out to other men on inappropriate ideas and behaviors and most importantly, I'll do my personal feelings work so that any relationships that come my way, I'll be ready to be true to them.  At the same time, don't think any of the above means I will make room for people to mess with me because that will never happen.  Instead, my mission is to take the best of the physical man and combine it with the cerebral and compassionately honest man.  Then, hopefully, when my time is done, I can serve as some sort of model that can contribute positively to this discussion about the new definition of constitutes a strong man.  That's my goal.  Hold me accountable to it while also supporting me and other men in achieving it.  It will only make us better as human beings building the type of world we want and future generations deserve.

If you didn't know, or didn't pick this up somewhere before, full disclosure.  My politics and principles are based on the concepts of revolutionary Pan-Africanism.  As a result, I typically don't celebrate any of imperialism's holidays because I believe they only exist, not to truly honor any segment of society, but as vessels to promote consumerism.  Still, I have to admit that the capitalists have something with Mother's and Father's Day because those two days, probably more than most of the others, tug at all of our emotional desires to be recognized for the contributions we make.  This reality is probably especially true for Father's Day because this is the day where any man who has produced children is to be celebrated for his work in helping raise that child.  For African (Black) men, this is somewhat of a paradox because the dominant message projected in this society is that we have been less than responsible in playing a positive role in our children's lives.  Even Barack Obama, that dark skinned mouthpiece for U.S. imperialism, has said as much.  I didn't need him to say that to convince me how wide spread the perception is because I have felt and experienced it my entire life.  I'm talking about that unspoken criminalizing that pretty much every African male experiences at some point in your life.  The question of "how many children do you have?" The awkward moment when I tell people my only daughter lives in California.  Since I'm often told I look much younger than I am, a lot of people have admitted that when I tell them where she lives, they assume she's younger than she is (she's 27) and that I'm not directly involved in her life.  Another example is the assumption from many people, especially African people, particularly African women, that I don't know what I'm talking about when I discuss parenting because how would I know? Dealing with these negative perceptions and assumptions was an issue even as I raised my daughter and those issues are still prevalent today when I'm physically separated from her on a day to day basis.

The truth about my fatherhood journey is that I've always been, and continue to be, a very close influence in my daughter's life.  I'm a guy who has fought and struggled through a lot of conflict in my life.  As a result, I've learned how to do quite a few things very well.  Quite a few critically important skills if I do say so myself.  One of those things unfortunately hasn't been building strong romantic relationships.  My inability at times to understand my feelings and how they impact me, my struggle to overcome deeply embedded feelings of inadequacy from my childhood (which were expertly reinforced as I grew up unfortunately) have caused me to make bad decisions - I'm talking about lack of intimacy, infidelity, as examples of coping mechanisms - that has hampered my ability to build successful romantic relationships.  This is something that has continuously haunted me and that I desperately work on moving forward, but honestly, I have to say this is my reality in relationships - not good.  Still, as I said, I have learned how to do several things very well.  Writing, speaking, guiding and facilitating people, solving problems, organizing, sports, creativity, leadership, a number of things.  But, the skill that tops that list is the energy and effort I put into being a father.  There was no nurturing for me growing up, so I made it the priority to insure I gave whatever children I produced as much nurturing as I could.  I started thinking when I was in my late teens about how I would balance nurturing and discipline.  I had a vision.  I had a plan on how I would correct the wrongs that have plagued me in my life.  And, I took this approach with complete love and respect for each of my parents.  They did what they could with what they had to work with.  So, I wanted to take the best of my mother, caring and loyalty, and the best of my father, consistency and discipline, and mold all of those important qualities into the father that I wanted to be.  

So, when my ex-wife and I had my daughter Shukura in 1987, I was ready.  I participated completely in preparing her room, shopping for her bonnet, and crib.  Painting her room.  Going to childbirth classes.  I even co-planned my ex-wife's baby shower.  It was a coed shower with cultural games.  It was a great occasion and I think we helped in a small way to provide people an expanded perspective of parenting as not just something directed at the mother, but something that the father and the entire family should be a part of; the African way.  When Shukura was born, I was there the entire time, in spite of having an extremely oppressive job that actually called me at the hospital while my ex-wife was in labor to see when I would be coming back to work.  After 36 hours of labor, she came into this realm through a C-section.  As soon as I saw her I walked over to get a closer look to the shock of the hospital staff who assumed I would be overwhelmed by the blood.  Little did they know my traumatic past had exposed me to much bloodshed.  By the time we got Shukura to our little two bedroom house in Sacramento, I felt I was prepared.  I had read two or three books on bonding with your baby.  I remember the books encouraging me to lie Shukura on my bare chest.  I did that daily.  I fed her, I woke up every other night at 2am, per our rotating schedule, to feed her.  I put her in the crank up swing and soon, I developed strong techniques in knowing how to get her to sleep, how to effectively burp her, change her, dress her, and even identify the different types of crying she did for whatever assistance she was essentially asking for.  I remember the very first time we saw her laugh when I rubbed her bare feet on the stubble on my chin.  

Even when her mother and I decided to split up, we sat down and agreed that Shukura would be our priority.  We agreed to put our personal issues behind her physical, mental, and psychological well being and each of us continue to keep to that agreement to this very day.  We agreed to a two week/two week agreement and for the next thirteen years, every other Sunday, we exchanged our daughter.  Not once during that period did she call upon me for her two weeks and not once did I call upon her for mine.  I learned how to cook for my daughter, do her hair, shop with her for bras, and support her.  I volunteered at every level of school she attended.  Went to her events on a regular basis.  Challenged her teachers when their teaching methods were racist/sexist, and unacceptable.  Hosted sleepovers.  I schooled her on the version of history I wanted her to have - that we are Africans in America.  Prisoners of war and that our heroes are the people who stand up to challenge this system, not the people who support it.  By the time she was 16, she had traveled to five countries on two continents and the Caribbean, including Ghana and Senegal in Africa, and she continues to add to this list on her own.  As she grew she developed some ideas and positions of her own and I encouraged her to do that.  I gave her as much information as I could and respected her decisions because I knew they were based on her developed analysis and not emotion or conjuncture.  All during this time her mother and I worked together to raise her.  We gave her birthday party's jointly.  We collectively taught her that Christmas, as celebrated, is an imperialist holiday and there was no great white man who would bring her presents.  If she got presents, it was because someone sacrificed for her and she should always show appreciation for that.  I remember the regular Friday night study sessions I had with her at the I Hop by our house, working with her on her academic skills.  We even gave her a large Rights of Passage birthday party complete with a local radio station D.J. celebrity.  As it relates to nurturing, one of the biggest problems for me growing up is I had a number of adults who engaged in heinous and violent acts against me and there was no one to protect me.  I'm talking about starting from when I was seven years old.  I was to be damned if that was going to ever happen to my daughter.  She would always know that she had someone, her father, to protect her.  So, whether you understand or agree with it or not, when that man attempted to intimidate her when she was in high school while she was walking our dog in the neighborhood, I did physically confront that man in her presence.  She persuaded me to stop attacking him, but she profusely expressed her appreciation at having someone stand up for her.  My mission was to insure she knew at all times that her value and place is important and that I would die before I let anyone violate her physical space.  This security was something that would have meant wonders for me in my childhood where personal security was completely nonexistent.  

When she moved into the dorms at Tuskegee University, I was right there, with her mother.  We visited her there, sometimes at the same time, during her five years attending that school.  I even successfully figured out how to pay my share of her tuition each time it was due, in spite of the difficulty in doing so.  The only time I didn't come through was In 2009, when she graduated.  I was going through an extreme financial trauma due to my transition in employment from the sick and oppressive financial world into the union organizing world that I work within today.  As a result, I had no financial way to attend her graduation ceremony in Alabama.  I remember the tearful phone call I made to her the week of the ceremony telling her I had failed to raise money to come see her walk across the stage.  I will never forget her response.  She told me that a lot of the fathers attending the graduation had done nothing to support their children growing up, but would be there to share in the glory of their children's success.  She said that me on the other hand, had always been there for her and that my inability to attend her graduation was nothing for me to be upset about because she wouldn't be graduating if not for me so whether I was there physically or not, I was always there with her.  

Today, my daughter is a school teacher in Sacramento.  She's trying to decide if that's what she wants to continue doing.  She may decide to move out of state and attend grad school in Tennessee.  If she does, I'll be right there supporting her 100% as I was there in Tennessee with her in April scoping the place out.  In Apirl, we spent her 27th birthday at an arcade in Memphis.  That was an appropriate choice for her on the day she turned 27, 10 days after I turned 52.  It was appropriate because I started taking her to arcades when I was 26 and she was one and we have been going to them since that time.  It's our thing together along with amusement parks and really any type of park.  

I have no way of knowing if anyone will even bother to read this post to this point, but if you are, please know that my reason for writing this is to highlight that there are plenty of African fathers who, in spite of the odds against us and the obstacles we have to overcome, are determined to play positive roles in our children's lives.  Nothing I've written here is intended to appear as a brag.  I've made too many mistakes in relationships to do that.  I do hope to underscore my belief that 500+ years of colonialist, neo-colonialist, and slave institution experiences for our people has played a major role in attempting to wreck havoc on our family structures, but we continue to fight back.  The way we fight back is to organize for our liberation and take small steps by rebuilding our humanity.  I have tried to do that by taking the sincere effort my father made, in spite of his shortcomings, and building on that.  I'm very honest with my daughter about my shortcomings.  I do that so that she can have her eyes wide open.  She can find a guy in her life who can do for her children (if she decides to have them) that I did for her and then more, especially in the way he interacts with her.  That's my wish for her and she knows that.  So, I'm far from perfect, but I'll put my effort at fatherhood up against any other man's including all those opportunists who love to knock the African father. I got a call today from my ex-wife, wishing me a happy father's day.  We have been divorced for 20 years.  Yeah, I'm not perfect, but how many dudes will be able to say that today?