Tag Archives: family

Samori Swygert: Letter to my younger black brother

December 2, 2013 admin Leave a comment

My Young Black Brother,

I hope all is well with you. I’m writing you in genuine concern and interest for your well being. You possess tremendous amounts of untapped potential and greatness that you have yet to discover about yourself. I’ve been in many of the same situations you’re going through now, and you are probably going through some I haven’t.

Everything I’m saying to you in this letter is out of love, because some of you never knew your father, or was abandoned by your father. I lost my father at the age of 6, and I understand the adversities in the search for manhood. Your big brother is just taking time out of his schedule to pause and holla at ya. I’m going to tell you some things that no rapper is going to tell you even after 6 full length albums and 100 interviews.

First, do everything you can to save as much money as possible. There will come a time a few years from now when you want or need to purchase, invest, or start your own business. Some point in time you are going to want to marry the woman you dreamt of and start a family with her, and that requires savings. Don’t waste your money on clothes, jewelry, drugs, alcohol and other nonsense. I did that in my teenage to college years and I don’t wear any of those clothes or jewelry now, and I no longer enjoy the effects of liquor and weed we drank and smoked. To be even more honest I lost 2 of my best friends in a drunk driven accident. I know if I was to calculate every dollar spent on fashion trends from highschool to graduate school, I would have tens of thousands of dollars. I’m doing pretty good financially now, but I would have been better if I had listened to my mom telling me to save my money, but I tried to keep up with the trends.

Second, respect your body man. You get one body, there isn’t a remix on life (that’s an AZ quote). Years of alcohol abuse, weed, ecstasy, and all other kind of drugs will take their toll on you. I’ve seen so many friends from college that look older than they are. You also want to be healthy enough to enjoy your family and be healthy enough to be an active parent in your child’s life. You also don’t want to be a financial burden on your family by being chronically ill. Make sure you refrain from unprotected sex. You don’t want to cut your life short by getting a disease that is incurable and physically destructive. Many women won’t tell you they’re infected, and some don’t even know they are infected and will infect you. Buy and use your own condoms, don’t let a female give you a condom. It is good that she is making the right and kind gesture, but you don’t know if the condom is tampered with. If you choose to engage in sex, a real man will get tested and get his girl tested for STDs. Get tested with any female you get serious with, and if she refuses, leave her.

You won’t get along with every girl you date. Some relationships will be all mental, some women will teach you things and change you forever, some will just be pure physical attraction, and you will also have spiritual connections. However, never ever, ever, ever, ever, put your hands on a woman. When you find yourself mad enough to get physical, just leave the relationship alone and quit it. You never want to be in that position. Never stay in a relationship with a woman that will push you to the point of physical force. You will end up in jail and ruin your record, ruin your gentleman reputation, deal with repercussions from the men on her side, and that’s just not love. There is a difference between a disagreement and physical aggression.

Also, if you meet a woman you really love and she loves and respects you, don’t hesitate to say ” I love you”, and express how you feel. A coward holds his feelings and is scared to act on them.

Be careful in these streets man. Society has a perception of young black men and many are looking for any reason to kill you or incarcerate you. Be conscious of your appearance, I know you’re not a thug, but if you fit the look that society sees, they will act on that perception. Les Brown said “how you dress determines how you’re addressed”. Carry yourself respectfully, talk with meaning and purpose. Don’t worry about people saying you are talking proper. One of the coldest and realest men I admire, Malcolm X, commanded the American vocabulary and could out debate anybody.

Having a child is no joke at all. As a young man, I know there are adventures, dreams, and just plain young fun you want to have. When you have a child, that will force you into adulthood, and all those adventures and fun will be put on delay. Babies are expensive man, you have to provide food, housing, daycare, education, and health insurance until that baby is your age and older. I don’t even want to mention the amount money you will spend in child support if things don’t workout between you and the mother of your child. You should not have to experience this at a young age, enjoy your youth. Always think with logic first and not emotions. Remember that all emotions are temporary, but some results are permanent so always think about your decisions. Always,…….. planning is key.

Think about your future and take responsibility for it early. Increase your reading and knowledge about any and everything. School doesn’t stop when 3:30 bell rings. Try reading a book a month, if you read 10 pages a day, that is a 300-310 page book. In 4 years you would have read 48 books that can turn you into a king. At my age I learned that knowledge is everything. The famous quote, “the strong rule the weak, but the wise rule the strong”, is true. Learn new languages and make friends of various ethnicities. Your country is becoming extremely diverse and you need to know more than english, believe your brother, I’m just keepin it 100.

Avoid gangs and violence bro. I know it’s hard because sometime the gang culture is overwhelming but try to stay neutral. You’ll get involved in all types of dangerous, life changing experiences you would never have wanted for yourself. Respect all men that respect you, and protect your elders.

Don’t believe one thing these rappers say. Rappers will have you screaming thug life and gang affiliations but they will not be there to take your bullet, or pay your bail, or keep your prison canteen commissary filled, fight your battles in jail cells and prison showers. Your favorite rapper won’t pay your debt after you try to buy everything you see in their video. Your favorite rapper wont take your STD pills if you catch one trying to imitate s****l acts talked about in their rhymes, or pay your child support. What rapper could have saved Biggie, and Tupac? None of these so called rappers could have saved them, all they could do is throw their name around, and write a song about them.

I used to hate to be told what to do. When I got older that made me say ” take care of your business or your business will take care of you”. The things that you should do, but don’t feel like doing, will having you doing things you never wanted to do for a long time. Make sure you get involved politically when you’re old enough to vote, because you want to have a say in the decisions about how you live your life.

Okay little bro, I’m about to bounce, but I just wanted to holla at you for a second. Be good. I’ll send you another one in a few months to come.

Peace,

Ya Big Bro Samori

You can also read this at: http://www.kulturekritic.com/2013/11/news/samori-swygert-letter-younger-black-brother/

Socio-Cultural Commentary

Genesis 3:9 –ADAM WHERE ART THOU? ( A Father’s Day question)

November 18, 2013 admin Leave a comment

By Dr. Samori Swygert

As Father’s Day approaches, I pondered about this question God asked Adam in the Garden of Eden. I feel this is an apropos question during these times. We’ve grown accustomed to news reports and police briefings about children that have been kidnapped and/or abducted. Local and statewide authorities will typically issue an Amber Alert to the public to make citizens aware of the abduction. What happens when the parents blatantly disregard their offspring and abandon their children?

Many parents have surrendered, forfeited, neglected, and purposefully defaulted on their call to duty of parenting. There is an alarming trend of parents in both genders that have chosen the AWOL and MIA pill. However, the child is left to swallow and experience the side effects of their parents’ choice. The irony of this scenario is this, as humans we struggle to prove independence, maturity, and adulthood. We walk around the city, workplace, neighborhood, and demand respect from strangers, colleagues, friends and family, but yet some of us aren’t performing the duties worthy of the title of man, woman, father, and mother.

The terminology of man and woman is often distinguished from boy and girl by age, physical maturation, and more importantly, ownership of responsibilities. Have we morphed into a society that condones adult s*x, but reneges and relinquishes responsibility, when it comes to caring for the life created from our own tissue that didn’t volunteer to be here?

There are understandable explanations at times, but there are also unacceptable excuses. Some parents may be subjected to violent spousal abuse, and this can be both physical and psychological. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to remain in a violent and volatile environment where their psychological hygiene and physical being are at risk of destruction.

However, there are derelictions of duty on the premises of selfishness, laziness, fear, incompatibility, anger, finance, new romantic interests, and a myriad of other excuses. Excuses are easily exposed by a simple question from the child to the parent in question. Why did you leave me? If the answer revolves around the prior list, then you probably made an excuse for a dereliction of duty. It is understandable, and real that some people are just not meant to be together, however it is not a get out of parenting free card.

When parents agree to terminate the relationship, they should fortify the plans for consistent involvement in the child’s life. Many children are left to the streets and unpredictable acquaintances of their surrogate guardians. Many kids today grow up in an environment where the mother is the TV, the father is the computer, the sister is the cell phone, the brother is the radio, and the grandparents are the streets.

These precarious familial structures often result in social tragedy and mental instability for many youth today. There is often no concrete accountability to the child, and at any given moment the streets and the new interim guardian can turn their back on the child, and leave the child feeling betrayed and broken hearted. This domestic dynamic is occurring in several homes in many communities across America.

However, on a more positive note, this domestic quagmire can be fixed and repaired. When these situations arise, the child must become top priority. Children are our seeds, and seeds need watering to grow. Both parents must put aside any and all excuses, accept reality and hydrate the child with the love it deserves. A flower will not grow by one glass of water once a week in the face of sunshine.

The sun will eventually dehydrate the flower, and too much water without sunshine will drown the flower. A proper balance of sunlight and water must be applied for proper cultivation.

This metaphor exemplifies the mandatory balance of both parent’s influence in the child’s life. Parents should exhaust every effort to provide the child with the love of a parent or stepparent without confusing it with the desires, expectations, animosity and resentment of a love once enjoyed, but currently defunct. A good relationship with your child’s mother is not a prerequisite to caring for your child, and caring for your child should not be contingent upon the mother being with you.

There are many good, strong black men that are actively fathering in a two parent household. There also men that are separated from the mother of their child, but still handle their fatherly responsibilities with diligence. Kudos and accolades should be granted to these men during this upcoming holiday. HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO THE MEN THAT ARE FATHERS! However, to the transient male that has produced a child, Genesis 3:9 has a question for you to answer. Adam where art thou?

Socio-Cultural Commentary

Hollywood is kidnapping our kids!!

November 18, 2013 admin Leave a comment

Hollywood is kidnapping our children?

by: Dr. Samori Swygert

It’s imperative that we become vigilant stewards and guardians of the quantity, and most important the quality of entertainment that our children ingest. Outbreaks of violence have become almost predictable and clockwork. However, as concerned citizens and family members we must take a proactive position in the intervention of the fate of our youth.

Routinely we hear about a massacre, a mass shooting, gang shootout, new recreational street drug, some new lewd and inappropriate dance, or behavioral trend. We must ask ourselves, “where is all this coming from?”. We can no longer expect the entertainment industry to have a moral conscious in the production of their material.

We are in an era where the family infrastructure is being redefined on a daily basis. Traditionally, we were accustomed to mom, dad, sister, and brother. Currently, these roles have been usurped and hacked by this digital age contagion. This has substituted the TV for mother, Computer for father, Cellphone for brother, Radio for sister, and has eroded the family bond. These new mediums consistently inundate and bombard our children with messages that are repeatedly proving to be hazardous for the youth.

The world has morphed into a narcissistic, attention driven, and instant satisfaction society. The entertainment industry is culpable in the deterioration of society, but rarely is the entertainment industry reigned in for responsibility of material and palatability of content.

Take a sober view and assess the covers of the magazines in your grocery store lines, the video games advertised, the movies featured, the records in rotation, reality shows aired, music videos produced, new age books published, and tell me if you see a recurrent decadent and destructive theme.

The entertainment industry is profiteering hundreds of billions of dollars off the demise of our children! Sexually explicit videos, movies, and books have pushed adolescent sexual promiscuity, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases to a new plateau. When we fail to regulate, monitor, filter, and talk about this material with our children, we allow the entertainment industry to subconsciously impose hazardous behavior into our children’s psyche, and the children passively accept it as innocent entertainment.

Hollywood makes the profit, and we are left with the byproducts to deal with ( early pregnancy, teen abortion, STDs). The oversaturation of sex in books like 50 Shades of Grey, and other lustful ghetto street literature induce a dangerous curiosity into the minds of adolescents that are not yet mature, or responsible enough to manage all aspects of adult behavior by themselves. Sex is a beautiful thing with the right person, and most importantly in a marriage.

However, the ubiquitous and omnipresent emphasis of sex has to contribute to the scores of young children sexually abused, raped, digitally abused on the internet (via compromising videos and pictures) and trafficked.

Do you remember the Steubenville rape case, where these young men engaged in raping an unconscious high school female, and then posted the pictures all over the internet via cellphone pictures, and destroyed this teenager’s reputation and physically violated her without consent? The allure of trying to become famous by asserting their male sexual prowess got these young men serving jail time.

Look at videogames like: Grand Theft Auto, Black Ops Call of Duty, Thrill Kill, and Soldier of Fortune and observe how pervasive gun violence, and brutality are interweaved in the plot. Think about movies and TV shows like : The Purge, Blow, Kill Bill, Breaking Bad, Lock Up Raw and a plethora of others and ask yourself “why is drug culture, prison life, and random acts of violence so celebrated now?”.

We have arrived at the clichéd fruition of, art imitating life and life imitating art. When shooting episodes like Virginia Tech, Newtown, Connecticut, Aurora, Colorado, Columbine High school, and Jonesboro, Arkansas occur, think about what the youth are consuming. Think about what they are being conditioned and indoctrinated with under the veneer and alias of entertainment. We arrest adolescents on the streets for drug dealing and incarcerate them for the violent acts associated with the drug culture. However, we give Emmys and Oscars to the producers of shows that prompt youth to experiment with this dead-end lifestyle. NPR published an article this week detailing a research study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study revealed that as of 2009, PG-13 movies have more gun violence than Rated-R movies.1

The music has become the soundtrack to self destruction. When we can turn on the radio and they are rapping about shooting, killing, drugs, sex, and frivolous wasting money, we have a few seconds left before its all over. The music videos have become soft porn, and encourage our young daughters and sisters to mimic the mannerisms of strippers.

Reality shows teach our women nothing but raucous, ratchet behavior. Think about shows like Real Housewives of Atlanta , Love and HipHop, Bad Girls Club, and others. The shows basically demonstrate and instruct young women how to scream, argue, and instigate violent conflicts without any modeling of positive, mature, lady-like conflict resolution. The emphasis is this ultra-diva like female that is money hungry, argumentative, irrational, and self-centered. This is not the type of woman any man wants as a wife, but these shows have our young women believing this is the path to womanhood. The men depicted in these shows are just as bad. Routinely the males are father to multiple baby mommas, absentee, consistently delinquent, players with excuses and stories to explain poor decisions they made.

Ironically, I can express what I’m saying by using a movie. A movie came out a few years ago called, Inception. The plot involved an agent that performed a psychological manipulation called, Inception. While performing Inception on his target, he was able to implant thoughts into their mind without them knowing, and the person would then execute the desired goal.

What am I saying?

We need to press the reset button and return to family and community. We need to have regular communication with our family members and neighbors and redevelop concern about what our kids are doing. We need to actively and regularly review our children’s phones, tablets, computers, TV shows, radio shows, and videos on Youtube, World Star HipHop, and any other electronic/ digital forms of social media, because our kids are under attack. The results are devastating and the devil doesn’t leave his fingerprints at the scene of the crime. He just leaves you with the tragedy to clean up, and the bill to pay.

Who profits?

The financial profit lies in high yield earnings for the private prisons for those that engage in illegal drug activity, pay day for drug companies that get new patients on Plan B abortificient pills, Antibiotics, or Antiviral medication from high risk sexual activity, a stimulus plan for gun and ammo manufacturers. Every time a mass shooting occurs, gun sales skyrocket because people feel the government will ban firearms, and people buy as much as possible to avoid being gunless.

The fashion industry makes a killing from young teens purchasing clothing to mimic and emulate the characters or stars in movies, music, and magazines. The movie industry and gaming industry makes more for the production of more films and games. The whole time we as a community are suffering the collateral damage of reckless indoctrination of our youth. It’s 2013 do you know where your children are?

People are to scared to speak up and call BS (bulls$it) when it happens. Benefactors of the industry say it’s “creative and edgy”. That’s a lie, it’s self destructive BS, and people are scared to be called a hater for voicing real concerns. These actors won’t complain, and will call you a hater because you are interfering with their paycheck, reputation, endorsements, and contracts. I don’t care about these bought and paid for minstrels, the posterity of our black youth are not for sale!! I may be on my soapbox, but so what, somebody has to speak up! Like Gil Scott Heron said, ” we got to do something to save the children”. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW!!!???

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