The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
Has the internet become the modern day slave shackles?
There are too many young Black people that feel they can’t do anything unless they do it using a digital device!
We can’t communicate with each other unless we do it by text, tweet or instant message. We can’t love each other because it is easier to click “Like”.
Gone are the days of the “Grio”, or African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and musician. Black and African history means nothing these days because if it did it would be “trending” on the internet.
There were both male and female slaves that were beaten, whipped or hung by their necks for merely teaching other Blacks to read. Reading was essential in the olden days as a way for Blacks to learn the truth about their past glory, their present conditions and their future opportunities and promises.
Smart Black people have never wanted others to tell them what the truth was, how Blacks should behave, who they should hate or who Black people should admire.
Ever since slavery days Blacks in America have felt a need to plead their own cause. So, they started their own newspapers and other institutions that would allow Blacks to inform each other, to teach each other and to educate each other.
Black newspapers came into existence in 1827 when Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm started the first African-American periodical called Freedom’s Journal. During the antebellum South, other African-American newspapers sprang forth, such as The North Star founded by Frederick Douglass. As African Americans moved to urban centers around the country, virtually every large city with a significant African-American population soon had newspapers directed towards African Americans. Today, these newspapers that are still around are struggling but have still gained audiences outside African-American circles.
However, today Black American youth appear to hate the Black press and anyone associated with it!
Do you ever wonder why the same old tired Negroes are always called on to speak at Black colleges, to host shows and programs on TV and radio and to attend political and social events?
They are the ones called because they are the ones that can be controlled. They can be told what to say and what not to say. The can be told what topics to discuss or report and what topics not to discuss or report!
Today, if you’re not an “internet hero” you are nobody.
Sad to say, but to many people in your community, nothing is true until the white man says it is true!
Jesus is white if the white man says Jesus is white. Cleopatra is white if the white man says she is white. And, Elvis Presley is the King of Rock and Roll if the white man calls Elvis “The King”!
If you have a comment or an idea different than those expressed on Fox News, people in your own community will hate you with a passion!
If you choose, elect or support someone that calls for equal rights and justice in your city or state and Fox News or some other media devil says get rid of that person, internet idiots will blindly do as white media devils suggest they should do.
We live in a time where young people know who has a big booty, know who has a fancy car, know who won the ghetto street fight, knows who has the cheap hair weave and they know who has the most baby mamas and baby dads.
People know these things because these things are posted on the internet.
Our children don’t read books anymore. They don’t even read e-books. They get their news from internet posts, chat rooms and places like that.
They know who the white woman is that lied about her race is because the white media spent days talking about the woman on their news internet posts.
But those same Black youth don’t have a clue about the white women that started the NAACP that the devil has made them think has been a “Black” organization since its inception.
If you put down your smart phone, your tablet and your laptop for a minute and pick up a book or
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.