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Originally written: June 17, 2018
I was watching a discussion on youtube a couple of weeks ago and something happened that I’ve been meaning to address. Just haven’t had the time. Work, work, work. Nevertheless, it brought to mind a lesson I learned a long time ago when I was engaging heavily in debates.
When I first began this process, it wasn’t something I officially set out to do. It was just a natural part of learning for me. Things had to make sense in order to take root within me and for it to make sense, it had to resonate with my mind, my spirit, my emotions, my conscience etc. I had a policy of never running from an argument, no matter what. I would see it all the way through because I was committed to finding out the truth, whether I had it or not.
I encountered all types of people. Highly intellectual people and highly intelligent people(yep, there’s a difference). People of average intelligence. People of low intelligence. Unwittingly, ignorant people. Arrogantly, ignorant people.
And they were all genuine.
However, the people I arguably learned the most from were… drumroll…
Trolls.
The trolls run the gamut just like the above e.g. from the highly intellectual to the ignorant. The difference is that they’re NOT genuine. This is what it means to be a troll. The nature of it is deception. It’s a kayfabe performance meant to throw people off their square. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong in and of itself with not being genuine. Whether it’s right or wrong all depends on the context and usage. For the purposes of what I’m speaking of here, it’s just an important point of distinction.
What do I mean when I say that I, arguably, learned the most from trolls? Well, I don’t mean quantity of information, knowledge, wisdom, etc,. Because of who I am by nature, I have always had a proclivity to learn in a rigidly structured and direct manner. Through confronting the problem head on. When I began to encounter trolls on my journey and I would engage them according to how I am by nature, I discovered that I could only learn so much in this way.
So what did I do?
In Jamaican Creole, there are two words that I can think of that approximates the term “troll” as used on the internet. One of those words is “samfi” or “samfie”. The other one is “jinnal”. They both mean someone who is sneaky, dishonest and deceptive. A conman or a trickster. It can be used seriously or playfully and the latter sense of “jinnalship” has a strong strain in the everyday, cultural communication style of Jamaicans.
Jinnal is a description we’ve always used for Ananse. I decided to fall back on the wisdom of Ananse whenever I dealt with trolls, which basically meant that I would have to begin to assume an unconventional, unorthodox position in these exchanges. I had to think in a fundamentally different way. I had to resist the urge to confront an argument face first or head on and instead approach it from behind or underneath or above or from the sides or from the inside out, twisting, turning, contorting all around and throughout it.
This is what I learned “from” the trolls.
This had nothing to do with the merit of their argument. They could have been arguing that two plus two equals seven. That they were wrong wasn’t the point. The point was that their method gave them an appearance of being right or having a worthwhile point simply from the fact that people didn’t know how to effectively neutralize their method.
When someone is either wrong or has a flawed position and we know it, our jerk reaction is to point this reality out. Now, let me give you an example of how to flip on your Ananse switch.
What is all this babbling about?
Well, remember when I said in the beginning of all this that I was watching a discussion on youtube a couple of weeks ago. It was a panel of about 6 people with a moderator. I knew (of) everyone on the panel except for one person. Three women. Three men. The topic seemed to be about Black relationships or something of the sort.
Anyway, one of the women began speaking of chattel slavery in america and she made the statement that Black Women were being raped and Black Men did nothing about it. Everyone there immediately took exception to what she said and began telling her how she was wrong and started to give examples of Black Men who rebelled against slavery and rescued our people, taking them to maroon settlements to live free and so on. She went on to say that she wasn’t talking about individual Black Men because that doesn’t count toward the system as a whole. Instead, she said she was talking about how there was never a collective, organized, coordinated, nationwide response from Black Men at that time against the system of chattel slavery.
The other panelists continued to try to go head first against her position and because of their inability to breach her METHOD, she was left with an appearance of being right or having a sensible point to the inexperienced.
What was the correct way to approach this statement?
The answer to this is to concede the point.
Here is how you proceed with the response. And you don’t aim your response at the person who made the statement in question. You address the people she addressed, almost as though you’re on her side.
And it goes a lil’ something like this…
“It’s a fact.
Indeed, there was no collective, organized, coordinated, nationwide resistance against slavery in america from Black Men. That’s just a plain as day fact.”
——-Break———-
(((However, you’re dealing with a troll. An intellectual troll, not an intelligent one. What that means then is that she’s being disingenuous and she knows what she’s doing. So, after you accept that the statement is correct, you need to examine WHY you feel the way you do about it. That means that the issue is the VALUE of the statement. Back to the response…)))
——–Break———
And what is the value of this fact?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Zero.
Nada.
It’s a FACT, no doubt, but it’s a completely and utterly worthless fact.
Two words.
Surveillance and Isolation.
Firstly, surveillance…
Black People are the most heavily surveilled race of people on the planet. For purposes of this argument, Black People in america are the most heavily surveilled race of people in the nation. I shouldn’t need to have to go into any great detail about this. It’s self-evident. It’s why we get stories damn near daily about Black People getting into trouble for normal, everyday activities e.g. sleeping on a couch, not waving or saying hi to a white person, going into a starbucks and not ordering within 2 minutes of being there i.e. not ordering “quick enough”, going to a golf course and playing golf “too slowly”, having a barbeq… I’ve made my point, right?
So again, we are the most heavily surveilled(WATCHED) race of people in the nation.
Here’s the thing…
Back during slavery, it(the surveillance) was A THOUSAND TIMES WORSE! In fact, the system of surveillance developed during slavery IS THE SOURCE of the culture of surveillance of Black People TODAY. It was the LAW that there could be no more than 3 of us gathered together without a white person closely monitoring us. Slave codes, later rechristened “Black codes”, was a system of surveillance where Black People had to basically have a “license” to go anywhere. You always had to have freshly written/ signed paperwork explaining why you were doing anything but slaving away on a plantation somewhere. You were constantly checked by whites to make sure that your duties/ activities were prescribed/ authorized by a white person.
How do you know if someone is looking you in the eye? You know because you’re looking right at them. So, if they had to create a law saying that Black People can NEVER look whites in the eye, it meant that whites were ALWAYS WATCHING!
No doubt about it, whites watch us A LOT nowadays, but when was the last time you had to crunch yourself up, put your big body self into a small box and mail yourself through the postal system to get somewhere without whites finding out about it?
Have I made my point about how off the hook the surveillance of Black People was at that time?
Good.
And I didn’t even have to mention the surveillance by the meritorious manumission seeking traitors among us.
Isolation.
There was absolutely NOTHING(good or bad/ productive or destructive) that Black People were doing in a collective, organized and coordinated manner nationwide in secret without any whites knowing about it. Black People didn’t even know where their own family members were that had been sold to other plantations around the country.
Let me be perfectly clear here.
Spreading a “secret” nationwide is a hell of a lot harder than spreading long-awaited, popular, public news via all forms of mainstream media. Yet, we had a 20/20 news special some years ago talking about how we still had Black People enslaved in america, Mississippi to be exact, up into the 1960’s because of how isolated they were from other people!!! It took YEARS for the news of EMANCIPATION to reach a lot of Black People and generations more apparently for it to reach ALL of them.
Did you get that?
It didn’t take years for the “secret” information of HOW we’re gonna get off the plantation to reach Black People. It took years for them to get the information THAT they had been freed from plantation slavery!!!
So, yes, it’s a fact that there was no collective, organized, coordinated, nationwide resistance effort by Black Men against rape/ slavery in america. That’s just a plain as day fact. Just like it’s a fact that Black People during chattel slavery didn’t flap their arms really, really fast and fly away from slavery. Just like it’s a fact that Black People during chattel slavery didn’t twinkle their noses and disappear off the plantations. Just like it’s a fact that we didn’t employ the use of wakandan vibranium to build any time machines or alternate reality teleporters to transport ourselves throughout the time/ space continuum in order to escape the plantations.
All facts.
All absolutely worthless facts.
(((At this point, you now address the person who made the original worthless statement)))
However, if you mean to imply that we could have, but we simply didn’t(kanye choice?), all you have to do is grace us with the brilliant, mastermind plot that would have worked to overcome all of those odds and freed our people in a lickety-split. Because I just LOOOOOVE to hear Black People who can’t figure out how to wipe their own butts without white people in 2018, talk about how much smarter, braver and better they would have been than our ancestors and ancestresses who fought to the death for the freedom of our people.
—-End example.—–
Now, this doesn’t mean that the troll will now concede and be quiet. That isn’t your goal per se. The goal is to remove the false appearance of her having any kind of a worthwhile point whatsoever. The troll will most likely continue to talk because for people like that, the most important thing is that they get to keep on talking. However, now the troll LOOKS LIKE THE TROLL THAT THEY ARE. Thus, they are rendered completely ineffective.
Target neutralized.
Langston Morrison3 Comments-
78,068
Abibisika (Black Gold) Points
https://abibitumitv.com/watch/snl-eddie-murphy-kill-the-white-people-video_x4Ice3QZWnYJTCt.html
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Any Black woman that says enslaved Afrikan men=Black men did not fight against slavery, either has a white man in her life, is married to a white man, is in a relationship with a white man, has friends that are mostly white men or white people in general, and surrounded by only white people, mostly white men
This also goes to Black men who make disparaging comments about our enslaved Afrikan women=Black women, either they have a white women in their lives, be it being married to a white woman in a relationship with a white woman, has friends that are mostly women or white people in general, and surrounded by nothing but whites.
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78,068
Abibisika (Black Gold) Points
Meanwhile, the culprits behind all of this own the very same jewtube on which the panel is played and laugh all the way to the bank. The more controversial the debate, the more the algorithm sucks in ad revenue. Mission accomplished.
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