You can’t hide from yourself

January 10, 2008 | Filed Under Consider this, Do your research!, Moment of Truth, Pay attention 

Such a simple truth is so easily ignored.  For years and years, I’ve been on a quest for “it,” that thing that made my spine tingle from passion, that gift that was so undeniable.  It seems to be a perpetual quest that could have ended long ago, because I always reach the same conclusion in my most clear moments. 

I am a writer.  Yet, often I don’t write.  Perhaps because I’m not just a writer.  If you notice a series of days where I’m not writing, I’m sure you’ll find me talking or reading.  It’s all part of the process.  I’m not a machine.  To get output, there needs to be input.  Sometimes the output doesn’t always make it to paper, yet still into the minds of others…it’s all about words for me.  Speaking or writing, speaking and writing…I’ve got to get it in my head so I can quit searching for the box I’m told I should fit in. 

There is no box and the advice leading to it is a lie. 

I’ve been on a lie hunt recently.  People have been lied to for so long and they’re just continuing to perpetuate those lies–purposely and unwittingly.  Black people have been lied to about themselves, their power, their gifts, their birthrights.  White people have been lied to about their superiority, their sources of power, and their birthrights. 

“The world isn’t just black and white,” some will say.  I agree to an extent but I think that the most poignant and telling stories about so-called homo sapiens is revealed by the true accounts of dealings between black and white.  When it all boils down to it, it is black or white, even as the terrible misnomers they are.

The intentional ambiguity and absence of my history is, at present, weighing on me more than it ever has before.  I’m curious about truth.  Before, it was universal truth that I sought.  Now it’s just the truth as it relates to my people.  I’ve finally awakened to the reality that equality is a lie.  Some are empowered by this myth, while numerous others are invariably weakened.  For so long, Black people (whatever that means) have been told that they were so inferior that eventually reaching a status of equality–which they haven’t anywhere–seemed like a dramatic feat.  Lie.  For so long, women have been told that they were so inferior that eventually reaching a status of equality–which they haven’t anywhere–seemed like a dramatic feat.  Lie.

Plenty will argue the affirmative or the negative; I won’t do that here.  Do your own research and see what you conclude.  But in doing so, please consider the source. 

Parents all over the US are accepting that sugar has no effect on the hyperactivity of kids because a report came out confirming it.  A scientific report, nonetheless, and we all know how terribly un-biased science is.  That’s what “they” say.  The study was funded by the US government and the food industry.  How objective. 

Let’s do our own imaginary study and see what results we can predict.  We’ll take 6 ten year-olds.  When they first wake up, we’ll give two of them, our control group, 8 Airheads for breakfast.  We’ll give experimental group A 10 Airheads and experimental group B 12 Airheads.  How much will the behavior and focus of the three groups change and vary?

Well, 8 Airheads is a ton of sugar.  Enough to give a large person a sugar high, especially on an empty stomach.  So take some ten year-olds and dope them up on 8 Airheads, and you’re already looking at some wild behavior.  While experimental group B is getting 50% more sugar than the control, remember that the control group is already high, wild, and crazy.  How would you measure the variation of highness, wildness, and craziness?  You really can’t.  Quantifiably, the blood sugar levels are different, but qualitatively, the behaviors are similar.  What do you conclude?

If you owned, let’s say the Oreo company, how big of a stake would you have in the determination that sugar does not effect hyperactivity?  A pretty big one, yes?  Well, let’s say that you owned the Oreo company along with a couple dozen other food companies that produced foods using sugar (or high fructose corn syrup for those of you who know no better) and you had D.C. lobbyists working to pass legislature in your favor.  The branch of the federal government that’s on your side is the F.D.A.  The branch of the federal government that would sponsor such a study as yours would be…the F.D.A.!  What kind of results do you think the government wants?

It wants the same thing you do as the owner of the Oreo company.  It wants consumers to not only not understand the link between sugar and hyperactivity, but to deny the link because responsible and concerned parents would stop buying the junk for their kids.  Responsible and concerned people would stop eating it, too.  This doesn’t help the finances of the Oreo company or the government. 

THE MORALS OF THE STORY…
     * Sugar causes hyperactivity

     * Study results can be fudged

     * Whites are not superior

     * Black are not inferior

     * Everybody ISN’T equal

     * Consider the source

     * You can’t hide from yourself…or the truth.  As you get older, certain truths will reveal themselves to you about yourself, about “others,” about society, about the way you live your life.  You can concoct all the fancy philosophies you want so you can comfortably sleep at night, but facts are facts, the soul is immortal, and you are accountable for what you know.  All too often is the story of someone who, once their agenda has been fulfilled and they’ve reached the age where thoughts of immortality are packed away while looming thought of one’s mortality stay at the forefront of their minds, start to prematurely grieve for themselves because of all their misactions.  Woodrow Wilson’s apology for allowing the set-up of the Federal Reserve is meaningless.  He knew what he was doing; the result just mattered less to him than being President.  There is a such thing as too little too late.

     * I am cryptic.  Deal with it.

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