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Blacks still waiting on other races to save them [From Main Page]

There can be very little doubt that our black nations are at the very bottom. The recently held elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire, had to be supervised by the United Nations. This, after the people of the DRC almost destroyed their country in a bloody civil war that killed about four million (4,000,000) people. Liberia and The Ivory Coast, once prosperous former European colonies, had to be rescued by external non-black powers. And just to show how useless our black nations are, the people of Rwanda were allowed to exterminate almost one million of their own people, while being ignored by bordering black nations.

Why is it that for as long as we can remember, we have been so dependent on others for everything? Several black nations condemned the United Nations for not preventing that genocide in Rwanda some years ago, but they saw nothing wrong with the fact that they themselves were refusing to do anything and that their intervention could have made a lot of difference. Not wanting (or unable) to help themselves, they were waiting on Great Britain, France and the United States stop the savagery. When will we ever get it?

Our refusal to even try to help ourselves is clearly demonstrated in other ways. Take the case of AIDS, for example. The highest incidents of this dreadful disease are now in black Africa. Why? Primarily because we refuse to think and help ourselves. Through public education and determined scientific research, this same threatening disease has been brought under some control in the advanced world. However, black Africa seems to care naught about its fate. As recent as a few years ago, the black President of South Africa even refused to acknowledge the fact that HIV leads to AIDS! Partly as a result of this, South Africa leads the world in the proportion of its population afflicted by AIDS.

Not only that, most of the efforts now underway to find a cure for this disease are being undertaken by non-black nations - particularly in Europe and North America. As usual, our black nations, which are suffering the most from this disease, are waiting on Europe and North America for a cure.

One of the reasons why we find our black nations in such a wretched state is because of the very corrupt leaders that we continue to be “blessed” with. Largely due to mismanagement, many black people suffer greatly. A few decades ago, millions of Ethiopians starved to death as a result of the greed of that country’s last monarch - Haile Selassie. Polio, which is a thing of the past in many of the advanced countries, is still a problem in Africa. High rates of illiteracy are common in the black world, with the result that the black world remains the least sophisticated and educated. Also of interest is the fact that much of the efforts to eliminate these problems are being organized, lead and in many cases actually being bone by non-black people. Again, like AIDS, we continue to make a mess of things, sit and wait on others to save us.

Our lack of initiative is nothing new. Indeed, this has been the case for as long as we can remember. Ever since the Europeans effectively brought civilization to us in sub-Saharan Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, we have been waiting on others for progress. For as long as we know, we were nothing, today we are still nothing and if we continue to do nothing then we will remain nothing.

While it may be true that the advanced peoples of the world continue to help us, mostly in the form of handouts, we should take note. If we think that such offers of assistance will last forever, then we are even more naïve than anyone could imagine. However, if we continue to do nothing for ourselves, then we will always be depending on others for our survival.

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Language: Cultural and Plural symbolisms in a society [From Main Page]

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great secret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded far more carefully than any of my earthly possession; and it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing (Johnson 1912, 9).

Johnson’s monograph encapsulates scholastic brevity, emotive, pluralism and culturalism that are embedded within words, phonology, syntax, grammar and it points to the essence of humanness (higher animals). When humans seek to (or not to) relate messages to each other, they do so by combining media, lexemes, gestures, sounds, vernacular, dance, music and other social defined symbols that are used to represent ideas. It is through this continuum that people learn, appreciate, grasp and comprehend their physical and social milieu. People are not merely vessels, which accept instructions at the command of others (as computers) but are interfacing with a socially constructed world that ostracizes them if they are non-conformant; as a result, they are interfacing with plethora of settings within their environment. Hence, they are expected to be receptive to the norms of the general society in order to be considered ‘normal’, which is to accept the rules of engagement. It is this process of social interaction that man (plural higher animal - word) formulates his/her role within the wider social space. Johnson (1912) writing alludes to an intellectual tool (language) that is capable of exposing deep seeded realities, which are likely to construct, annihilate or build social cohesion. Language, ergo, is not merely the combination of words within a grammatical pattern but it is the art, science and the technological edifice of societies in an effort to explicate the natural world - through socialization, common sense, cultures, governance and abstract rationality, while fostering a harmonious relationship between the natural and social world. It is through language that we communicate our (and others) social behaviours.

"Miss Lou"

She helped to define “Jamaican Language”

People like all animals are continuously interfacing with their natural world in an endeavour to understand it. This is not atypical. As our natural world includes our social world, which does not surcease in creating plethora of challenges, experiences, and abstract truths. It is those natural experiences that people, in seeking to describe those events, are likely to create social complexities to justify as explanations. In an effort to explicate what is, man ventures into series of social constructions among which is language. It is [language] a defined tool for social communication - of the natural setting; or, is it weaponry of social destruction? According to one clerisy, language is a human mode of communicating experiences and observations through the use of symbols, signs, gestures, and syllables to which are generally acceptable meaning standards, which fosters the flow of information between (and among) peoples (Macionis and Plummer 2002, 21). Another writes cites that “…language is profoundly implicated in all human social activity and cannot easily be isolated as a specific causal factor in violent conflicts” (Chilton 1997, 174); which means that language is not limited to the spoken expressions, the grammar, the syntax and the rule of engagement but a system that offers social meanings to man’s existence. Even though Chilton uses the negative event to emphasize a viewpoint, the theme is applicable to any situation. Man’s expression is his/her language, and his/her language is the cultural expression of man’s life -the belief, the morals values, the social stratification, the cognition development, the social solidarity, the value consensus and the social institutions to which he/she belongs. Johnson fails in the recognition of self and how to best contextualize issues of the day and how these influence his thinking during childhood but acknowledges this in later adult years. Deena, on the other hand, contextualizes the experiences of people during the nineteenth century in an aptly fitting and socio-political correct manner by stating that:

The nineteenth century, from a colonial perspective, is seen as a period of historical adventurism, a period of world exploration from which emerged numerous travelogues, diaries, letters, and reports describing, in a mysterious and exotic manner, the land and people of the new world (Deena 2004, 163).

Embodied in Deena’s monograph are the utilization, value and purpose of language in explaining culture of a people while allowing the experiences to be described in a manner that allows generations to come a more in-depth knowledge of what transpired during a certain time. It can be construed from Deena’s writings that adventurousness of man can be captured in language, which is an effective tool in human’s armory. This allows for discourse, monologue, falsification of constructs and ideas, representation of perspectives base on ones observation guided by the socialization process and the structure of forecasted events. Language is culture, emotions, man’s cognition in progress, objectification, subjectification, and multidimensional human expressions.

Expressions

My mother and I lived together in a little cottage which seemed to me to be fitted up almost luxuriously, there were horse-hair covered chairs in the parlour, and a little square piano; there was a stairway with red carpet on it leading to half second story; there were pictures on the walls, and a few books in a glass-doored case. (Johnson 1912, 11).

Speaking as how he does, Johnson not only paints the world in a succinctly descriptive manner but he labels those words in a fashion that allows the reader an opportunity to conceptualize his socio-economic background, some of his privileges, challenges and it also offers an incite into other areas of the man’s life. Language is not primarily superfluously constructed words, but they are ‘life’s’ - experiences, socialization, symbolisms, and socio-psychologic road map of man’s existence. “Language is the most important meeting ground of the sciences and of letters” (Whatmough 1956, 5). Hence, Johnson’s monograph looks into the life of author, and does provide some guide to the evolution only of the speaker but of those that he encounters and how they help to mould an experience. A biologist, Allport, writing on the issue of ‘Language and Cognition’ puts forward the view that “…neuropsychological evidence has little to tell us about the part played by language in the evolution and transmission of culture in society” (Apport 1983, 61). Clearly, man’s language is hidden in his/her psychosocial experiences within the general society, as it is a neurological possession in a social evolution. This implies that linguistic inabilities delay communicative expressions but they do not put a damper on non-verbal reasoning and expression and by extension natural and social happenings. Hence, group dynamics germinates the culture and not a single entity. Macionis and Plummer’ stance, on the other hand, is we interpret life’s existence through our acceptance of the standard meaning system, and not because of its natural form. Sociologists identify this experience as culture. According to Wikipedia:

Language is an element of culture that contributes to every aspect of human relationships. Andy Clark’s assertion that language is the ultimate cultural artifact is backed by the countless functions that language serves. The role that language plays in human interaction transcends basic communication (such as commanding somebody to do something, or providing information when asked a question) to facilitate the existence of ethos and mythos. This cultural artifact encodes meanings through its ability to manipulate what others imagine. The existence of denotations, what we mean to point out or say, is often received as connotation, what people have culturally subscribed to understanding when something is pointed out. Because of language’s ability to encode a wide range of meanings, and represent almost all ideas, it is the ultimate cultural artifact (Wikipedia 2006).

Culture is dynamic. “Cultural realities must then be rejected on two grounds: (a) if the observer’s vision is the truth, then it cannot just be part of the relativity of the observer’s culture; (2) if that truth is to be part of others, then cultural ‘worlds’ that differ from it or reject it must be obfuscations of some king, obscuring the truth” (Ardener, 1983, 144). Despite the non-staticness of culture, the difficulties of present scholars, pundits and people to explicate what seemingly appeared some time ago makes for misleading constructions. As if the interpreter does not understand the contextual meanings of the happening of the writings, he/she is highly unlikely to abstract the experiences as they occurred within the setting. With this background, how do we explicate the rightness of histographing peoples’ cultures and how are we able to ascribe ‘betterness’ to one culture if we are to superimpose it on another? Brown says that ‘cultural models’ are within different arena of people’s lives; and Simeon argues that language plays a pivotal role in Caribbean culture and adds that “… [It] continues to generate debates among Caribbean intellectuals” (Simeon 2005, 151). Some believe that language embodies the Caribbean nationals’ oral traditions - customs, mores, norms, perspective, and total expression. This is captured in the peoples dance, music, folklores, identity, and oral histories.

Man’s capacity to create, recreates, and justify his/her actions is an importance made in the laying of a platform of truthness. Language is the tool that is used to explicate man’s sociologic; but Bruner puts it as:

The acquisition of language, in addition to being a psychological matter, is also a thorn in the side of linguistics, a testing ground for theories in the philosophy of mind, and a major enterprise in that part of anthropology and sociology that concerns itself with how a culture get passed one. (Bruner 1983, 31).

Hence, the individual who controls language (means of ideology) dominates the other. It is this expression, using language, which fosters slavery, racism, apartheid, Christianity, culture, socialization, and others. Language is an institution that shapes perception, social construction, discourse, biases, and capacity to formulate more abstraction. One should not believe that language is fundamentally coined words (or phrases) to communicate but it is a capacity to manipulate human imagination for the purpose abstraction, cultural symbolisms, socialization, embodied experiences, the mastery of deception in an unedited form along with the supremacy to tranquilize those who have not come to understand its intricacies. From one clerisy’s monograph, he posits that language is the culture and the cultural experiences are live in the language (Young 1968).

One of concrete myth is some people cite is ‘I will not judge.’ In order to grapple with the intricacies of this double barreled word phrase, I will request my reader to engage me on this trajectory. The word judge implies a state of authority which is applied to a decision process. It does not inform or dictate a bias (or lack of one) but when use in conversation is an insidious medium that will weaken a discourse (or monologue). Despite the use of the term (judge), the user could blatantly disregard the informed man’s intellect to accept a position that he/she is unceasingly unbiased. But the choice of the word is to cripple a discourse, which of itself is an offer of flagrant violation of unbiasness. As human experience is tainted with biasness garnered through a certain culture, socialization and knowledge, which is asymmetric with the all social art forms. This reduces a possibility of abject impartiality. As ones culture pre-exposes the individual to biasness. With this constructed fact, man (either gender) is bias and so he/she will evaluate (judge) what he/she sees own with prior happenings. I will delve into the biases in the use of language, and how we intoxicate ourselves in judging another man (either gender) based on his/her language usage.

Language is the spirit of a culture, cultural systematic symbolism. It is the embodiment of yesterday, today and tomorrow for each group. Despite the biases which are current hidden in societies, language is a good measure that can be used to unearth some of the social meanings which exist in society. I will quote an author whose work encapsulates this paper. He says that:

Probably the single most important event in the life of any Negro child is his recognition of his own coloredness, with all the implications of that fact. The realization-can come as mild awareness that is taken in stride, or it can come as a rude shock that results in a trauma; but whatever the circumstances, a new understanding of the self influences the child’s every thought and emotion from that day forth. Truly, he sees the world through different eyes, from a different perspective, with somewhat less of the innocence of his earlier years. The selections that follow will guide some idea of how a Negro child reacts to this moment of truth (David1973, 1).

The writings of David emphasize the type of society that exists within the time of ‘Nineteen prominent Negroes’ in America. The experiences speak to the language (label) ascribe to a particular group of Americans and the complexities caused from the social stratification. The realities of those people meant a certain life, experiences and challenges. The society in which they reside was discriminatory, exclusionary and separatistic, a culture for many Black (the language label - Negro). The term denotes every except that which is pure, good, intelligible, worth of equality and of innate value. It is a setting that has fostered slavery, racism, fascism, segregation and cultural divides, which is still to be healed within contemporary societies and cultures. To the ending of David’s monograph, he writes that “The selections that follow will give some idea of how a Negro child reacts to this moment of truth”, which can explain what Johnson refers to when the Black child was engulfed with rage and through a book which brutal hit a Caucasian child. Within this experience is the craft of language to explain a social practice of a culture that was (or is). The rage, the choice of words that resulted in the behaviour, the societal milieu, the social interpersonal dynamics, the psychological traumatic of living within this discriminatory and exculpatory setting are all exposed by the use of language. As the very writing of Johnson, David and other writers is one avenue of expunge a past by identifying those errors which are in need of elimination. As according to Bates:

Elizabeth Eckford was one of the Negro pupils to whom Little Rock’s Central High School reluctantly opened its doors in the now famous integration showdown of 1957. The colored children had originally planned to enter the school in a group, but with racial tension beyond the danger level, plans were suddenly changed. Elizabeth somehow was never notified of this change. Thus it came to pass that she was left completely alone to face the full fury of the rabid mob that had gathered outside the school. The experience left her near hysteria and it was along time before she was able to recount the episode (Bates 1973, 203).

The Politization of Language

Over the decades, the elitists among us have continued to “scuff” at Creole (Patois, ‘BROKEN’ language) as a language. This is because of its “mediocritic” provenance and the social class associated with its usage. In order that finesse is brought to this discourse, a position must be provided on what constitutes a language. In addition, we must be able to comparatively analyze those factors in order to establish whether or not Creole is a language. We need to move this debate beyond social biases in order understand where Creole falls. Despite European “culturalization” of the Africans mindset in the world and moreso those who are scattered in the Caribbean, Westerners’ indoctrination is the hallmark used to adjudge good taste, quality and ‘class’ in the Jamaican experience. As such, many peoples in our society even among the lower class believe that Patois is the corruption of English. And so, it is not rightfully a language.

Although personal biases oftentimes are brought into the discourse, if we were to put those issues aside, would we have elevated Creole to the status of a language? Continuing, because Patois is primarily the mother tongue of the lower classes, social stratification is used to determine its non-validity as a language. However, what are the functions of a language, and if we were to apply those same definitions to Patois, would Creole be a language?

Lalla (1998, 11-15) in English for Academic Purposes posits there are five distinct functions of a language and they are as follows: “self expression”, reflection, “complex communication”, conveyance and interpretation of new ideas, characterization and identification of people in their communities. Moreover, language, she forwards is a complex process of different events. Consequently, Language is so dynamic and complex that while lower animals use it in its basic form, man’s usage of it shows its supremacy.

Continuing, language is a composite system of interrelated events in which the sender and receiver uses symbols, signals, expressions, spoken words, complex formulate, and the mode of communication must live long after the present users are gone. Hence, “Is Creole a language?” Furthermore, language allows us to recall, write and encapsulate feelings of events for future reference. In order, that any spoken words be classified as language, it must fulfill the condition of longevity. Hence, let us answer the following questions within the construct of what constitutes a language:

- How long has the Jamaican Creole be in existence?

- Does the Jamaican Creole fulfill the following functions of language as English:

- Self expression

- Reflection

- Complex communication

- Conveyance and interpretation of new ideas

- Characterization and identification of people in their communities.

Based on the functions of a language, it is difficult to fathom the reasons why Creole is yet to take its rightful place within the language arena. Unless social stratification is indeed more powerful that academic reasoning, Creole from Lalla (1998) writing is a language.

Language is the lived culture of a people, and according to Young (1968) it distinguishes us from the lower animals such as the chimpanzees. But this institution (language), is not fashioned the same for each grouping within society as the certain people are labeled (language) as the holders of knowledge, power and so are of greater statute (language) than another human. With this premise, the use of Creole in any culture is a clear distinguisher between the powered group and the working group. Here the use of education (language) is used against particular sect of people as a measure of class, finesse and prestige. Because the working class does not own knowledge, financial resources and median, they are unable to afford a structure that makes for the crafting of standards. Despite this happening, plurality exists in all societies as the poor among themselves modify the dominant culture, and sometimes create counter cultures, which rivals the mainstream ideology. This is also another bias within the language formulation. Hence language is not merely the coined usage of words; it is a live embodiment of cultures which separates the groups. I will provide a number of examples here to illustrate the identification power of language:

* On a bus commuting from West Parade, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, to Montego Bay a black man in tattered garment speaks Standard English to a woman who had step on his worn shoe. The petite young lady remark, “I thought you are insane.” Embedded in this monologue is the defining power of language, and how we are able to ascribe labels to social experiences and at times natural happenings in an effort to comprehend what is seen, and

* People who use a particular accent (or ‘big’ words) are reverence as astute, and of a higher class than those who are unable to do the same.

*** THIS ARTICLE WILL CONTINUE IN THE NEXT EDITION ***

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Dear George & Osama, Re: The 72 Virgins War [From Main Page]

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. In the last decade scientists made two critical observations that reveal more about time and life than we previously guessed. 1. Earth is suspended at the exact center of an observational sphere over 27 billion light years in diameter. 2. The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate that drives receding objects from a standing start to the speed of light in about 13.7 billion years.

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. A mathematical formula, emerged from these observations that describes the nature of the universe by defining light and gravity as reciprocal functions of time. At the foundation of this model lie the electron, proton and neutron, the smallest stable particles found in any physical structure of this universe.

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. These observations & formula produced a theory of time, life and physical existence responsible for US Patent Application No. 11/323,897, a process for human resurrection/reincarnation. Copies of that document are available at http://homepage.mac.com/coldbeer/ FileSharing13.html

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. As any testable theory of life after death preempts the authority of any existing religion to administer heaven, hell, 72 virgins or any other promise of after life (as well as the assorted moral codes they produced upon which our governments are founded), a cessation of hostility is proposed to begin on November 1, 2006 and endure for the time required to evaluate the theory through real world application. This will also give our global communication systems the opportunity to develop mechanisms that preclude war. If tests reveal a flaw in the theory, we may resume hostilities any time thereafter.

Numerous efforts were made to have the United States reduce the tariff - to no avail. The countries are still suffering - the banana industry in some of them has been wiped out. Fear and ignorance cause war. Only courage and wisdom can end it.

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