by Howard Fitz

Created on: July 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 28, 2008

There is no one that gets in my butt more than me when it comes to not reaching my potential in any situation I deemed I could have done better. I get beside myself and dig in I also do it to my people. Other people handling of black people is sometimes predictable when knowing the factors involved I lost the habit years ago to yell racism for I figure it must be more to it so I put forth efforts to step into others' shoes to try to understand their mindset.

I remember watching the Sopranos with my mother and the episode when Tony's daughter was dating the African-American/Jewish guy and Tony asked, "your ethnicity is what", the guy responded with, "AA/Jewish", Tony rephrased the question, "what did you put on your college admission application", the guy responded with, "African-American since Jew is not an ethnicity", Tony's response was, "wait in the car". Tony then proceeded to drill into his daughter Italian pride. My mother (born 1945) deemed that as being racist, I understood people of other ethnicities are going to compare other ethnicities to their level of accomplishments and if they are not impressed then respect will diminish their desire to befriend, do business with or unite families with people with below standard rating by their measuring system.

I term a people's duty to maintain themselves by way of culture as "Cultural Hygiene", everyone with a culture has unique ceremonies, rituals, celebrations, festivals, holidays and rites of passages that brings about unity and joy that strengthens the family and ultimately the community, strength is impressive and respected. Black people in America do not have a culture we think we are Americans we practice the same thing as European-Americans and yield different results. The only culture we have is what we observed and absorbed from our former slave-masters since we were not allowed to practice that which was our culture, speak our own language and perform our ceremonies, rituals, rites of passage and religion. We are like dogs living under cats rule trying to do as they do at the base of a tree without the apparatus to climb it. Sheepdogs are made, by getting the dog to believe it is a sheep, it is suckled from infancy from a sheep and left to be raised by a sheep as a sheep to grow up thinking it is a sheep and protect until death its perceived kind.

Communities in America are usually composed of ethnicities with the same culture, Black, Mexican, White, Chinese, Eastern-Europeans and so on, it would

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