I read tons of online magazines these days. Ans I am not referring at all to those magazines with boobs, bras and bikinis splashed on the covers. I don’t buy and read men’s magazines because they are I believe a waste of money as well as time. As much as possible, I want what I read and see to be free. So the Internet is good enough for me. It’s free and of course limitless and bottomless. Simply tap on the keyboard, click on a mouse and eureka! everything you wanna know is right before your eyes.
I read magazines that I believe will make me more less stupid and much smarter than the person beside me. I’m on a quest to find those magazines that will help me escape the clasps of being a moron.
That is why I read UTNE, an arts magazine, which is an acronym for Understanding The Next Evolution. It’s packed with very interesting articles on the arts, life and the human lifestyle. The literary selections are equally top-notch. That is why I’ve decided to share with you the highlights of a literary letter I really admired and enjoyed reading from the aforementioned magazine. I’m only going to quote phrases and a couple of paragraphs from the selection. If you deem it necessary to read the whole article, you better buy the issue or maybe visit the magazine’s website at utne.com but I’m not really sure if they maintain updated archives on that site. It is a literary piece in a letter from addressed to Condoleeza Rice.
Dear Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice,
“I wanted to let you know, in no uncertain terms, just how much I disagreed with your political positions, abhorred your relationship with the Bush clan, and anything else I could think of.”
“Why did they care what I thought about you? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. These white people wanted me to do what I was planning to do with this letter: finger-point, neck-bob, and hand-wave. Call you a traitor or, worse, a “Tom”. Dog your personal appearance. And in doing so, I would be met with thunderous applause. On both the right and the left, black people publicly scolding other black people for being culturally or politically backward is what’s hot. “
“Whether right or left, the message is, if you’re black and have something shitty to say about somebody else black, you’re likely to find an appreciative (and mostly nonblack) audience.”
“All black people in the United States make choices and make more concessions, for we know that the battle for self-realization is never fully on our terms. “
“And what I think about you and your chosen occupation is precisely this: Your ascendance to the role of secretary of state is, for me, simply what it is-a reflection of a racist society that isolates brilliant black people from themselves and forces them to serve America’s imperial interests. What happens next is that the left or the right, depending on which trajectory the black person has chosen, will use that person as an example of how politically or culturally misguided black people are. In my fight to rebel against that fate, I find that I too am trapped by the options. I have to do what I am also good at-which is to work to ensure that no other black children, traumatized by bullets and bombs, feel they have to abandon everything they know and love, and attack another black person’s limited options in order to save themselves."
May you truly know peace,
Kenyon Farrow
It's typically a really short letter but the insights and and ideas it contains are immeasurable.