Affirmations and Essays for Melanoid People

table of contents

Introductions

Race and White Supremacy

The Power of Voice: An Artist in the Midst of War

Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman: How Long?

The Power of Voice: An Artist in the Midst of War II

(Racism under the system of White Supremacy)

Alex Haley’s TV Mini-Series,  Roots, Now Redux

August  2014 Trayvon Martin/Zimmerman: How Long?

Season of Terrorism 2015

(Dylan Roof) 6-17-15

Hurricane Katrina: 11th Anniversary Revisited

The Plantation

Writer's Watershed

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Burn Out or Divine Discontent

Healing

The Power of Father-Child Relationships Depicted in African American Literature

The Importance of Black Literature (Originally published in 2000)

The Power of Mother-Daughter Relationships Depicted In Black Literature

Forgiveness

Loving Ourselves Healthy

Writing Ourselves Healthy

Turning That Ultimate Corner

Freedom Through Creativity and Entrepreneurship

The Importance of a Mentor

Using Socio-Political Issues as a Back-Drop for your Writing

How I Began to work in the Prison Ministry Through My Literary Services

The Importance of Urban Fiction

Travel

Breaking the Rules: A Writer's Journey

The Importance of Travel for a Writer/Person of Color

The First Pagoda

Economic Empowerment for Melanoid People

Self-Publishing (Indie Publishing): The New Middle Passage

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS....

When Is the Right Time to Start a Business?

The Importance of Image and Ownership in Black Business

The Power of Networking

The Hidden Benefits of Public Speaking

For Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things

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The Importance of Conferences

When Art Imitates Life

Conclusion:

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction:

This is a perilous time for all of us as African American

people in the diaspora of America. I think of the

unjustifiable murders.

Trayvon Martin, (whose killer, George Zimmerman, was

acquitted,) Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Alva Braziel,

Delrawn Smalls, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and, on the anniversary of Sandra Bland's death, no justice in sight. The recent release of the police officer, Michael Slager, who shot Walter Scott in the back 5 times and planted a Taser on him, ended due to a mistrial.

I thought back to my journey from being born into

apartheid Detroit, Michigan in 1951, into poverty, and

into disenfranchisement, raised where all but one of

my friends in the inner city of my Detroit neighborhood,

Delray, succumbed to drugs, and I wonder how I

survived at all.

But with the hope of our ancestors, the will of my

mother, I made it against great odds. This one lesson I

have learned. Life is predicated on giving. I am a servant

to my God, and to my people—Black people.

I spent twenty-three years working as a social worker in

the inner city of Detroit, then later in the hoods of Los

Angeles. I had clients from all walks of life, but I made a

special effort to help my people, Black people.

I left my job on October 31, 1997, and have since

worked in the literary arena for Black writers. I’ve worked

as an editor/literary agent/ghostwriter for books which made the NY Times Best-selling list. Most of my clients have been Black. This is my calling.

Someone once said something about me as a literary

Agent on line on a site about Preditors/editors. "It looks

like most of her clients are Black."

At the time, a writer I represented defended me, saying I was always able to get  her literary contracts. But if I had written my own response, it should have been, Why not? Did Harriet Tubman free white slaves? No, she freed her own people.

This is my offering as to how I found freedom, and I hope to help you find yours.

Race and White Supremacy

The Power of Voice: An Artist in the Midst of War

(Racism under the system of White Supremacy)

By Dr. Maxine Thompson

Those who commit the murders, write the reports.

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was an activist and a journalist.  According to Wikipedia: She was born into slavery in 1862, but as an adult, she documented lynching in the United States in the 1890s, showing that it was often used as a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites, rather than being based on criminal acts by blacks, as was usually claimed by whites. Needless to say, she had a voice at a time when it was dangerous for a black person, a woman at that, to have a voice.

In that vein, I never realized how important my voice was until I lost mine after a thyroid surgery in 2008.... We're not talking laryngitis, either. Have you ever tried to ask for directions when you sound like a fog horn, and the mailman can't understand you? Or, have you tried to order a fast-food take-out over the drive-through window speaker when your voice won't go up enough decibels for the person on the other end to hear you? Or, better yet, have you ever hosted an Internet radio show for authors where you sound horrible, and you know it, but you have to move on because this is part of your calling? Talk about frustrating, and that was only my literal voice. How about my spiritual and metaphorical voice in the world?

Well, it started me to thinking about how so many African American authors, who weren't given a chance to get published back through the years, even up through the 80s, and early 90s, (I was one of them), have now been given a voice. Many have self-published to get their words, their voice, so to speak, out to the world.  I know I did. Eventually, I sold 6 books to other publishers, but now I’m relaunching my books under my own company.

Anyhow, some African Americans have been published through traditional, mainstream publishers, but the point is, we now have a voice. The Internet and social media have opened a lot of doors, too. Over the past 8 years, with President Barack Obama as our first African American Chief of Staff, we saw how important the voice of the people can be when we united. However, we didn’t ask for enough for our race, in terms of now we are living in an even more treacherous time, much of what is being documented through technology and social media. But as writers, we need to document. The power of the pen still reigns.

Whether the media forgets, we should never forget.  Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Alva Braziel, Delrawn Smalls, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and on the anniversary of Sandra Bland's death, everything is the same. Let’s not forget Trayvon Martin, either. Do you recall any convictions for these murder victims? Do you expect to see any convictions for the more recent murder victims, Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, which were captured on video and live streamed for the world to see? Or more recently, Charles Kinsey, a behavior therapist, who was shot by police Monday, 7-18-16, with his hands held up in the air. Will there be any conviction?

What should we do as writers? We write. My business philosophy, taken from my old job at the Los Angeles County Department of Children Services, is, If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen. For example, if a child was injured or killed in a foster home, or in its parent’s home, and the authorities couldn’t find any documentation in your case, indicating you had made all reasonable efforts to supervise and protect that child, you were in deep trouble. 

Likewise, if you don’t write what you are seeing happening here in the United States, you are just as involved in the complicity of these crimes we see around us.

Our job, as a writer, involves taking a stand. What is going on in America is wrong. Systemic racism is wrong. This involves all of its offshoots—mass incarceration of Blacks, poverty, redlining, racial profiling, police brutality, miseducation, and lack of reparations for our ancestors who provided the free labor which built the wealth of this country.

On my Internet radio show on Artistfirst, 7-18-16, where I interviewed 21-year-old author, Terrence R. McCrae, who penned the book, What Should We All do After the Trayvon Martin Trial?  (and one which I edited). I’ve cited other books which, (along with the Underground Railroad, abolitionists, and the fact slavery was morally wrong,) helped end slavery. These books include, but are not limited to, David Walker’s Appeal (written in 1829,) Frederick Douglass’s narrative, My Bondage and My Freedom, and even  a white writer’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In the 20th century, another white writer, the late Harper Lee, addressed racism in  the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in the brilliant summation given by the attorney's character, Atticus Finch. One of the best books of the 20th Century, which addressed the internal devastation (yet the triumph of the human spirit) of slavery, was Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel, Beloved, by Toni Morrison.

Let's face it. We’re in a war. A war on our community. As artists, this is