TENNIS SHOES AND TATTOOS

TENNIS SHOES and TATTOOS

Before I go further, please psychologically process what comes to your mind when you see this title, Tennis shoes and Tattoos.

We, the collective we, often have conversations, arguments, diatribes, discussions, intellectual stimulation, or whatever adverb you may choose to focus your attention on as we ponder the mindset, culture, hood mentality, etc. of our young mis-educated African American populist.

We continuously encounter these young impressionable minds using terms like “keeping it 100 hunnit,’” “hustler” “hood scholar” “gangster”, and other colloquial verbiage that is thought to be unique to one’s origin or “racial” makeup.

Our purpose and focus for constructing this proclamation are to unpack the baggage of psychological enslavement and self-destruction of our “African American” counterparts.

Universally, we use words such as hope, perseverance, hard work, focus, self-esteem, hunger, and character to identify those that we deem will be successful and a credit to society and to their “race.”

Ironically, we seem to steer very carefully around the dishonesty that is sewn into our pages of academic awareness, as we squint our eyes at that huge “multi-colored “elephant in the room.

?That elephant that clamors for our attention as it implores us to highlight and to introduce all of our academic anemic students to the universe’s true scholars, philosophers, inventors, and astute stalwarts of our society that were and are the true brain thrust in academia providing the knowledge that we purport to possess as we dispense to them what is deemed an education.

We simply refuse to accept the fact that people only know what they know, thus, being miseducated by way of receiving skewed information and dare I say purposefully manipulated information to bolster the status and or perceived expertise of others rather than those that actually did the work.

This ultimately gives birth to; confusion, misunderstanding, and a sense of false euphoria because they have been “hood winked” into thinking that they have “arrived” and are integral parts of the “American dream,” unfortunately; they are met with a why are you here expression on the faces of their detractors as they come into the rooms and expect to have a? seat at and contribute to the discussion that uniquely addresses them at a table that does not have a chair nor a place set for them.

When one’s primary focus is on tattoos and tennis shoes he/she has been led to believe that this is his/her plight and the only way to gain recognition, notoriety, acceptance, and a comfortable seat at the “Afro-American” table. He/she gravitates to that medium of self-destruction, mediocre if any formal education, embracing family and community destruction not realizing that he/ensure that he/she is “keepin’ it real” never realizing that he/she is being fed rotten tomatoes, spoiled flesh, and fruits and nuts void very little if any nutritional value.

For one to be systematically brain washed into believing that he/she does not possess the mental capacity to interpret, to process, to analyze, to create, and or to lead he/ has already succumbed to and has accepted a life on the “reservation” overrun with despair and mediocracy.

As we sit in this windowless room, we systematically add insult to injury while blindly walking into a manufactured world known as “Artificial Intelligence.”

We become exponentially manipulated by the use of the word progress. How so, you might ask, we do this by accepting the fact that we can no longer; think, articulate analyze, process interpret, etc., we allow some programmed machines do our thinking in the “interest” of expediency not realizing that we are beginning to be programmed into thinking that someone else can think better for us than we can think for ourselves.

Which brings us screeching back to the elephant in the room “Tennis Shoes and Tattoos.

In addressing our “African American” population, we must strongly embrace a mindset of DEPROGRAMMING.”

What exactly does that mean, it simply means when you do not know who you are, anybody can tell you who you are through manipulation.

• Deleted, depleted, and altered academic information.
• Withheld academic information.
• ?Academic identity theft.
• Bullying
• Gas Lighting
• Book banning
• Low or no positive expectations.
• It is an inexhaustive list of dishonesty.

Melvin Casey Lars

5/11/24

3:36 PM????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????