Almost one year ago, my partner and I launched MyAfricanDiaspora.com. We launched the site because we felt a void that needed to be filled. That void was the separation, no, the isolation of people of African descent. Our shared blood roams the continent of Africa, the new world of the North America, the shores of the Caribbean, the gray skies of Europe and the fertile lands of Central and South America. In truth, we’re sprinkled around Asia too - special shout out to the native Black people of Australia.

The only problem is, many of us don’t know anything about each other. The link has been severed as cleanly as if a shark had bitten off a limb. We toyed around with the idea of a nonprofit aimed at serving members of the Diaspora, and will probably still do that at some point, however we felt the easiest way to bridge that gap now - was through the use of the Internet. The dream is beginning to blossom, one connection at a time.

I’ve talked about what obtaining my ancestry has meant to me in the past, and I was determined to make sure someone else received the same benefit. We chose Black History month to award our first free African Ancestry trace to one of the registered members of the site. Check out the interview and article here.

With the help of African Ancestry, this will be the first of many such awards. Now, you can certainly register and wait for your chance, but I do hope that many of you will take the plunge, forgo purchasing that next designer bag or hold off on the rims and invest a little money in something that will fill up that hole - even if you’re not even aware its there, it is.

I’ve interviewed a lot of folks - most have been some of the most enjoyable and enlightening conversations I’ve had and Ms. Lane was no disappointment. This sister got it. She understand the value of making that connection and had already begun to fill in the blanks of her family tree long before learning that she’d won the contest.

Another subject near and dear to me is entreprenuership and I was pleased to learn that Carmen was also a business owner. She runs a diversity and orgnizational development consulting firm in Lansing, Michigan. What a coincidence that a person that has dedicated their time to helping others understand the value of diversity would be the beneficary of our contest. If you’re in the market for this type of service, what could be better than supporting our sister? You can email her at: thelaneleotagroup@comcast.net or phone 517.580.7656.

In college I discovered Claude McKay, one of the many famed Harlem Renaissance writers. Mr. Mckay was born on the island of Jamaica, but came to the US to attend Tuskegee Institute and also attended Kansas State University. He spent his life dedicated to writing and editorial pursuits, winning the Medal of the Institute of Arts and Sciences in Jamaica and The Harmon Gold Award for Literature.

He penned two of my favorite poems: Outcast and The White City. I’ve included them below in case they are new to you, a strong third of his on my list is IF We Must Die.

My first year of college was a turbulent one, I struggled to find my way between childhood and adulthood and being 16 didn’t help one bit. I was what you may have described as an angry child, having a bit of a short fuse. These poems crooned to that anger and hatred like a Sam Cooke ballad.

It’s really no fun being angry all the time, harboring grudges, hate and the like. It’s something that I’ve worked on over the years, but watching and reading the news, I see that many of us have yet to wrestle this demon into submission. Visit USA Today on any given morning, scan any article related to Barack or Michelle Obama and read the comments. Ugly, isn’t it? Read about the Black on Black violence in South Africa - made me want to puke. Every time I smile and nod at another Black person who either sneers, ignores or looks at me like a martian, I want to…well, revert to my old self.

How do we defeat hate? It really simple in theory, but difficult in practice. First, you must confront it - lay out the facts, what or who do you hate, and why. Go so far as to write it down. I’ll bet when you look at it, you’ll find your reasons fit into one a few categories. Now, challenge yourself to validate these feelings. I bet most of them will begin to look exceedingly silly. You’ll no doubt find some broad generalizations, old childhood scars and preconceived notions that have no basis. Do you really know what all Black people or white people act like, think, smell like? Take the challenge, then take the first step to freeing yourself, focus on the things in your life that really matter and don’t waste so much time worry about everybody else. The world will look and feel much better tomorrow, trust me.

Outcast

For the dim regions whence my fathers came

My spirit bondaged by the body, longs.

Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame:

My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.

I would go back to darkness and peace,

But the great western world holds me in fee,

And I may never hope for full release

While to its alien gods I bend my knee.

Something in me is lost, forever lost,

Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,

And I must walk the way of life of a ghost

Among the sons of the earth, a thing apart.

For I was born, far from my native clime,

Under the white man’s menace, out of time.

The White City

I will not toy with it nor bend an inch.

Deep in the secret chambers of my heart

I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch

I bear it nobly as I live my part.

My being would be a skeleton, a shell,

If this dark Passion that fills my every mood,

And makes my heaven in the white world’s hell,

Did not forever feed me vital blood.

I see the mighty city through a mist–

The strident trains that speed the goaded mass,

The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed,

The fortressed port through which the great ships pass,

The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate,

Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate.

For the record, labels don’t impress me. Quality does and overpricing doesn’t always equal quality. You see, I’ve always been frugal (cheap is such a nasty word). Frugal to me means, recognizing quality, buying it when I need to, but not wasting money on unnecessary things or marrying myself to a label someone pronounces “in”.  This is all probably a left-over of all the no’s I heard growing up. Guess it stuck.

Years ago, a friend who I hadn’t spoken to in a while asked what type of car I drove. With a raised eyebrow, I said a Corolla - fuel efficient, solid automaker, kinda cute. Apparently he was not impressed. And I wasn’t bothered.  That was one of my earlier indications that for some people, image really is everything. From the looks I get, my current car doesn’t quite measure up to what people feel I should be driving either.

I’m not sure when it started, it seemed that my generations’ parents were so grounded and tried to pass along all those appropriate lessons to us. “Don’t try to keep up with the Jones”, they’d say. It seems that far too many of us didn’t listen.

We are the most in debt, have the least amount of savings, are more stressed and get significantly less sleep. Yet on average, we make more money, are more educated and have a wealth of information on saving/investing right at our fingertips. I see my sisters more willing to spend $500 on a purse than to take that some money and buy stock in Coach. I see my brothers driving Escalades, a $50k investment, but couldn’t tell you what the S&P 500 is, let alone where or not he was investing in any of the companies traded there. Don’t even think about asking them to take that money and invest in a business that would really reap them some benefit.

At some point, we decided we did want to keep up with the Jones’, the Williams and everybody else - at any cost.

The average house in 1950 was 1000 square feet, in 1970, 1400, but by 2000, it was 2000 square feet - yet, families are smaller. I truly believe our need for more, for bigger and for the more expensive speaks to something else that is missing in our lives. Only, we sadly never understand that that next purchase never fills that hole for very long.

If the middle-aged, broke and far from fabulous continue on this path, the future will hold one of two options: a long, excruciating retirement lived in squalor or working until the day before the grim reaper shows up.

The optimist in me hopes that at some point, my generation will abandon the quest for things and embrace the debt-free lifestyle that would ensure their and their children’s future.

Throughout my life, I’ve always had the feeling that something was missing - and harbored a certain anger because of it. Early on, I wondered if it was something internal, something a little off in my make-up, some lack in my soul that was my fault.

Later, I thought it was because of the loss of my father. Something that at 21, I wasn’t prepared to deal with. Beyond that, I thought it was my growing dissatisfaction with my career pursuits. I loved technology, but never seemed to be happy and jumped around to many jobs, thinking the bigger paycheck would fill the void.

But that didn’t do it either. Then one night, I happened to stumble upon a documentary done by Dr. Henry Louis Gates in which he discussed our African Ancestry and went on to have several celebs and other people of note do a DNA test to discover their ancestry. I sat on the edge of my seat as I watched!

This was it! My father had always preached the importance of understanding our-story and made sure that we had books, art and other items to support that. But here was an opportunity that didn’t exist in his lifetime. Long story short, I ordered my own test, found out I share ancestry with the Mende people of Sierra Leone and after contemplating how best to reach out to my new extended family, together with my partner (also Mende, Kru and Balanta), decided to launch this website.

Doing so has changed my life. I’ve talked to Black people around the world, made connections with members of my new Sierra Leone family and plan my first trip to the continent later this year. I’m doing work that I love now - this blog, the website and my other writing. Even with the bumps in the road, thing have been on a definite upward swing - the hole is closing fast, only a sliver remains.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the power in reconnecting those severed ties between all members of the African Diaspora - from the U.S. to London, from Brazil to Zimbabwe, from Panama to The Dominican Republic. My science fiction mind buzzed with the possibilities.

Recently, I was able to pass along this gift to someone else. Recognizing how important the gift was for us, my partner and I decided that awarding an ancestry trace would be our very first contest/giveaway for the MyAfricanDiaspora website. Soon, I’ll write an article in which our winner talks about what this means to her.

Thank you to Ms. Gina Paige, co-founder of AfricanAncestry.com, first for giving me my gift and then for partnering with a small Black company like ours to pass along the gift to someone else.

I was wrong.

Unlike some people, that’s not a difficult thing for me to admit. It’s freeing and I highly recommend more people give it a try. You won’t look dumb for admitting when you’re wrong. On the contrary, you’ll gain more respect for being able to demonstrate simple deductive reasoning and being able to gauge when your previous conclusions may have been wrong.

Anyway, I digress.

When I first heard of Barack Obama, and his bid to become the Democratic nominee, I thought - yeah, right brotha. Good luck with that. Seems it’s time for me to eat crow - at least to some degree. Hilary has decided to step aside and it looks like the unthinkable is…well…thinkable. I didn’t think it possible for White America to support a Black candidate. No, I’m delusional enough to declare racism officially over - just look at some of the comments on any USA Today article about Barack and you see that it’s alive and well. But it is undeniable that his victory represents a certain amount of change and progress.

Barack will become the first Black Democratic Nominee for the office of President of these United (sometimes) States. There are those who believe that his ascension is based on his mixed race, or the fact that his father, while Black, was not born here - into our legacy of slavery. While those arguments may have merit, I’m not going to entertain them. I see them as trivial and divisive. None of that changes the fact that he is a Black man, plain and simple.

So now, we launch into what I believe will be an even more bloody 5 month battle for the Presidency. McCain’s followers are working overtime already, trying to dig up more dirt, bring up more inconsequential anecdotes, whatever it takes to blur (the easily blurred) American public from the real issues.

Based on my record for predicting these things thus far, I’ll keep my mouth shut about what is or isn’t possible. Truth is, I didn’t think I’d be writing this post today, so who know what we’ll see in November. But, it certainly would be nice to see Barack, Michelle and the kids bring a little color to the White House.

There’s so much talk about education, or the lack thereof that our kids are receiving from our public schools. I myself have posted on the topic and while I feel that there is definite need for change in that space, another area is being neglected as well.

Parents seem to have forgotten that part of their job is to educate their children on the issues that aren’t covered in school and that are also of particular relevance for people of African descent. Our heritage is one strong in the oral tradition that teaches not only our history but important life lessons and I say it’s time we remembered that. So here’s my list of things that every Black child should be taught by their parents:

1. Respect and reverence for their elders

2. How to save and invest money

3. Manners and etiquette (this includes conflict resolution)

4. Entrepreneurship

5. Black Pride/Ancestry (sorely lacking here, I’ll save further thoughts on this topic for another post)

6. How to be responsible and keep your word

7. To strive for excellence in everything

8. Spirituality (not necessarily religion)

9. Respect of your body (health, sex, etc.)

10. To give to others that are less fortunate

Yes, I know this just adds on to everything else you have to do as a parent, but feeding, clothing and shuttling off to school is just the beginning.

Thoughts from you parents?

Today I read an article on CNN entitled “Can Obama win over the working class?” Of course the headline grabbed me, I didn’t want to click on it, but I did. You see, I knew it was going to be a bunch of hogwash before I read the first line and I suspect that most of you would too.

In this case, the media has adopted the term “working class” as code speak for white. Particularly those of the West Virgina and Kentucky varieties. The article suggests that Obama could win over this crowd if he convinces them he could alleviate their economic woes and connect with them on a personal level. Ok, and I just saw a Unicorn swoop by my window, wings and horn glistening in the sunlight too.

The article would have been much better served to address the real issue. Some white people in this country won’t vote for a Black candidate and no amount of convincing or connecting is going to change that. Is that not clear enough for the entire country to see? What does that suggest? If they are so clear to point out that Barack has 90% of the Black vote, why not tell the truth on the other end?

And by the same token, there are some that will wave the Barack Obama presidential candidacy in front of our faces and say: see, it’s over, there’s no more racism in this country. A cop-out at the least, and dangerous at its worst. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize the progress that has been made. A year ago, you couldn’t have convinced me that Barack would be in this position. But it’s irresponsible to suggest that he is an example that all is well.

I don’t know if Barack should try to woe this segment of the population, part of me believes they won’t be won over. But, I guess as a potential candidate, he’s going to have to develop some strategy. In the end though, if you’re going to take on the fight, it’d be best to clearly define who it is you’re going to tangle with.

Like many, one of the turning points in my life was reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. The transformation and growth are themes that still strongly resonate with me. His story is one that should demonstrate the power of two things: education and a willingness to change.

Today we celebrate his birthday. The post by fellow AfroSpear member Electronic Village says it best, so today, I’ll just point you there.

Apparently the nature of the relationship between LeBron James and his mother is vastly different than that of my relationship with my mom.

In Monday’s game against the Celtics, LeBron’s mom jumped up - maybe to defend for 6′ 8″ baby during a wrap up with Paul Pierce. I don’t begrude her that, I bet a lot of mom’s may have instinctively done the same. Kevin Garnett was kind enough to assure her that no harm would come to her child.

What is a problem (or at least would be in my family) is how LeBron reacted. He told his mother - yes, I said mother, to “Sit your A** down”.

Huh?

Say that? To my mother? Even under my breath, as a grown woman?

Not in this, the next or any future lifetimes. I guess the nature of their relationship (or friendship) really is just a bit different than what I’m used to.

As some of you may know, I’m an aspiring writer. My genre - hold on to your weaves and wave caps - is science fiction/fantasy. I know that some of us have no place in their lives for whatever isn’t “keeping it real“, but I’d argue that science fiction may be the true mother of invention.

That cell phone you like? Those doors that automatically slide open on your approach? Talking computers? Thank 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek.

Anyway, my purpose is not to convince you of the virtues of embracing the speculative, the unexplained and the wonderful possibilities of the future. That should be a nobrainer. Inventions and advancement come from people who can imagine the previously unimagined. Would you really want to live in a world where today’s reality is the only thing you will ever have? Luckily, the Black science fiction community (readers, writers and enthusiasts) is much larger than I originally thought. Check us out over at the Carl Brandon Society , SciFiNoir , and the Black Science Fiction Society.

I’ve always been an avid reader of just about anything I could get my hands on. As a child, I even started my own library (nobody actually checked out any of my books though), but not until a couple years ago did I discover that I wanted to write.

I’d gotten compliments from friends and professors and inspired by my favorite sci-fi author, Octavia Butler’s, thought - I can do this. She wrote strong Black characters in a time before it should have been possible. So many others have followed in the path, there are too many to mention - maybe I’ll do a post on them all, but for now, check out my friends: Dr. Nnedi Okorafor Mbachu, Carole McDonnell and Charles Saunders.

With some urging (ok, hard pushing) from my significant other, I picked up a copy of Orson Scott Card’s book: Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy and the rest is history.

Only my history hasn’t exactly begun yet. I’ve written one novel, two short stories and have the beginnings of an outline on my next novel, actually a trilogy, but so far no bites from publishers. Submitting my stories to critiquing groups and publishers has been a challenge. It seems that writing characters of color isn’t all that well received in some circles. I’ve even received a comment to make one of my characters “more Black“. What that means to me is probably some white male exaggerated perception of what it means to act and be a Black man. Sigh.

Will I give up? Not a chance. Would I like success in the realm of the Stephen Kings of the world - of course, but it won’t define me. I love writing, just for the sake of doing it - it’s something nobody can take away from me.

My words will always be mine and if just a few people feel me, then I’m cool.