On this day that I proclaim U.I. Tuesday I just thought I would remind some of our posters about our responsibility to our readers. I am making my attempt, and I hope some of you will join me, to wean myself of that corporate monster called Facebook. Anyone remember the time when if you wanted to talk to someone you picked up the phone? You didn’t text, you didn’t email and you damn sure didn’t send a post to their page. Remember when saying Happy Birthday meant actually buying a card and mailing it? Yes FB makes all that more convenient in its electronic form. Yes it enables us to interact with old school mates from days gone by. Think about it though, when your birthday rolls around, do you or do you not get MORE birthday wishes from people you either don’t know or haven’t spoken to, with your vocal cords, in decades? That is so impersonal. We used to say that email killed the spoken and written word (when was the last time you actually WROTE a letter with your chicken scratch), well now FB/texting have killed the email. There’s no need for it we say.

 

Well my friends, I’m here to say there is a need for it. FB/Texting makes interactions so impersonal. It takes a click or two to send a birthday wish. It takes time and effort to actually compose your thoughts onto paper. That shows you really care and are not being driven by an automated prompt telling you that so and so’s birthday is today. I understand that someone you went to school with years ago may not trigger a memory of when their birthday is, even if you ever knew it, my point is that there are many, many people who would forget their Mother’s birthday, their anniversary, their children’s birthdays if it wasn’t for FB. That is sad. That needs to be addressed.

 

I believe that the only way to address this oversight is to disconnect every once in a while from FB. If you find yourselves checking FB in the morning before you check on your kids, you need a disconnection. If you check FB before you kiss your wife/husband/domestic partner, you need a disconnection. If your phone vibrates or chimes and you stop what your are doing to check someone’s inane, mundane or downright silly post, you need a disconnection. If you risk destroying your vehicle and ending either your life or another’s life to post on FB, you need a disconnection. I have just the remedy.

 

I suggest that we make the move to Urban Intellectuals website. At least for now, our interactions on the site involve more than just casual likes or five word responses to messages about God, Twerk videos, Cats (although one of our admins is sure to slip cat vids in on us from time to time, you know who you are) and ghetto/ratchet/turnt up behavior. The selling point to our site (that we all requested to be a part of) is that you have to think to comment on our site. If you come out half-stepping, you will be chewed up and spit out so fast it will make your head swim. Not out of malice or ill-intent but simply because you didn’t think your idea through. We have all seen posts on FB, including some from our own family and friends, that make you just shake your head and say “really?”. We provide a respite from that nonsense. I’m not advocating deactivating your account, FB does serve a purpose but we need to be the leaders that we think we are.

 

Speaking of leadership, LaTonya Davison commented on a discussion we were having yesterday on FB about canonization of certain black leaders. She asked a small, seemingly insignificant question, why, we the U.I. Posters, do not think of ourselves as leaders. Kinda caught me off guard as I have always thought of myself as a leader but in the context of what we were discussing, it raised a few points. One, if one of us was thrust into the position of speaking to our entire culture, what would we say? Two, would we get stage fright and forget all that we say we know? Three, why do we tend to look for leadership from outside of ourselves instead of going for the whole thing.

 

To answer those questions for myself. One, I would encourage us to stop with the intergration/assimilation talk. Not because I don’t think its a noble cause and not needed. Instead I’m of the belief that before I can change the dominant culture I must first take strides in changing OUR culture. Changing our culture in the sense of discarding unproductive believe systems such as consumerism, capitalism and self-destructive behaviors too many to list. I would replace that which we removed with first the culture of about us, for us. We have all had the feeling of exclusiveness when we walked into a room full of white people and all of a sudden the conversation stopped and everyone looked at us. We blew it off, after all some of these people are our friends. There was though that nagging tickle in the back of our consciousness asking what was so important that they were talking about that my mere presence disrupted the flow? We are a independent bunch. We don’t really give a damn, but still, that tickle is there. WE need to be about the same. We need to stop broadcasting our private discussions and soul searching to the dominant culture. We need for our improvement to come from us and be shared with only us. We are NOT trying to change what the dominant culture feels about us, we are trying to change what OUR culture feels about us.

 

Two, me, stage fright? Listen, I’ve been conning people into believing I’m smart my whole life. I come from the “fake it till you make it” school of hard knocks. I’m that rare person that could give a lecture at Harvard and actually make people believe I know what the hell I’m talking about, even if I’m not sure of it myself. I can convince you I can perform brain surgery and up until the bone drill is in my hands will you know any different. Bright lights don’t move me as I know that I’m just one person working for a larger cause. There will be those that can say it differently, but not many that can say it better. I’ve passed the test of what is expected of a spokesman, I have the letters behind my name. I have an audience that sorta, kinda likes my blathering. I even have white friends. So if not me, then who? Like they used to say back in the day, if you scared go to church, cause for this to be successful, for us to be truly free, there’s going to be a few skinned knees and busted lips.

 

Three, LaTonya made me think. Inadvertently she reminded me that I been bullshittin lately. I hadn’t been on top of my game. I was just like the rest of the pack, looking for someone else to be the alpha dog, to be the spearhead, to take the bullet. (Hey I admit it, I’m scared of hollow point lead poisoning) However, if we leave leadership to someone else, all of our insights then become mere posturing. We often speak of how ill-prepared the next generation is to take the reigns of power, then what happens when we pass on to the next plane (whatever you may believe it is, LaTonya Davison)? Have we then shirked our responsibility to simply hold the fort until they are ready to take over?

 

As such, I make this challenge to us U.I. I challenge you to bring your followers over to our page. Yes we have many friends but we have followers as well. These are people who we’ve never met yet they still read our every word and even if they don’t comment or in any other way indicate that they have absorbed any wisdom from us, they listen. We have let our friends and family become slaves to the cult of FB where everything is a “trend” soon to be forgotten when something else comes along. Example, whats the latest on Trayvon Martin or Ms. McBride who met her end on a white man’s porch in Detroit? What’s the latest on the woman who fought with the police and drove off in the van with the police shooting at her? Those were hot “trends” not that long ago. We have allowed our readers to become trained to follow a trend for as long as “they” tell you to. FB has also killed the attention span. What that means is that when the switch is flipped then not only is a given subject not a “trend” any longer, its now forgotten.

 

We can be the bulwark against that. Yes, the word of the day is bulwark. We can make sure that not only do the readers of our site develop the ability to sift through the bullshit, but also to find solutions to the problems that they may be faced with. We need to be a cult. The cult of knowledge and insight and intellect. The cult of self-respect, of self-improvement, of personal responsibility. We need to be known as the anti-cult of mindless drivel, of wasting time debating nonsense issues (who cares about what happened on Scandal or BMJ or RHOA?), of believing that our success derives from forcing the dominant culture to include us, something no other culture does I might add. We must be one, regardless of what our personal feelings are, we may disagree about the niceties and minutiae, but when we speak, we must speak as one. That one overall voice should speak and say SHIT HAS GOT TO CHANGE AND YOU EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST AND BELIEVE ME, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE AGAINST US.

 

U.I. AWAKENS!!!

 

Drops mic and walks from stage drippin’ blackness.