Thought of the afternoon: Shout out to Colin Boyd...I just finished reading The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace...I started it on Sunday and finished it this morning...A quick read, on top of the fact I was transfixed with this story that pretty much enveloped my consciousness the past couple of days...I read it from midday on sunday and then last night up until about 2:00 a.m....Then I got up at abou 6:30 a.m. to try and finish before I made it into the slave, which I was thankfully able to do...I am not even tired, although when I went to bed, I still couldnt drift off initially because my mind was fixated on this story of a young, brilliantly gifted and impoverished black kid from East Orange, New Jersey who goes to Yale, yet tragically ends up being shot and killed at the young age of 30 a few blocks from his house while being in the midst of an ongoing weed distribution operation... Most people will look at Peaces life as a sign of wasted talent, but they only mean within the framework of what he could have done something meaningful with his life that is predicated off making money primarily and maybe doing something to benefit the world or, more honestly, that which is construed in the Western mind as benefiting the world...Hence, he could have run the World Bank or he could have been the lead researcher at Monsanto or he could have ran a non-profit like the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation...All these things are seen as benevolent and good on the surface since they are legitimate if nothing else, but do the most evil of deeds in the most objective of analyses....At the end of the day, his trade of dealing marijuana was much more beneficent than most likely ANYTHING else he would have been doing with his degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry...Although he was WAY smarter than me, I doubt Peace realized this because the ability to digest the truth isnt indicative of intelligence, but moreso having a mind not obstructed by the barriers placed upon it by a culture built upon his physical and, more importantly, mental enslavement... I would suggest that anyone read this book to get a better understanding of contemporary inner city culture and its segregation from middle class white Amerikkka, which is still the final determinant in what is considered good and bad, from a moral standpoint if nothing else...I am posting a BookTV interview with the author Jeff Hobbs, who went to Yale with Robert Peace and was his roommate for four years...As I told my man Colin, I am not vain enough to think that this singular narrative of this man or even yours truly is the most important thing historically or even currently with our ongoing ecocide, but it was a personal journey reflective of my own in many aspects...This is really true in relation to Peaces family dynamic with his parents, their particular stories, how he interacted with them and although he was raised by his mother, he was more his fathers son...And although I wasnt as successful scholastically as my man or even as I could have been for reasons that had nothing to do with my intelligence, the fact of the matter is that I understand the heavy burden and pressure that goes along with being perceived by the black community as an intellectual, to whatever degree that is true... I am glad I read this book because as I have spent the past few years reading about so many different things from climate to energy to economics to history to religion to cultures and as much as I could with whatever time I have had at my disposal, I did it more in hopes of being somehow able to stop the steamrolling of this Earth by way of the actions of Western society...Now, as I have totally accepted this is totally IMPOSSIBLE and I cant put that burden on myself any longer that has taken a weight off my back akin to the Earth weighing down Atlas, I have found myself more introspective regarding my time on this Earth in relation to all these dynamics that have formulated who I am as well as the world around me and even those things that are happening a world away, but affect me through the ripple effect... Great story with a tragic ending...maybe more a description of the existence of humanity than the singular existence of one Robert Peace.. youtube/watch?v=bD1iyWn4dcY
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:57:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015