But Hey, What Do I Know??

By Myran Jones

But Hey takes a journey into history and shares the mentality of our black ancestors as it pertained to every area of their lives, as well as looks at the behavior of our current generation. It will present some of the great success stories to show what can be accomplished in spite of discrimination and roadblocks if one has the mind to pursue a dream. The book is motivational, biblical, inspirational, historical, political, relational, psychological, philosophical, ethical, influential, original, and valuable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543464801

Myran Jones

About the Author Myran Jones has almost a decade under his belt as a public speaker in the areas of motivation and black history. Well liked as a speaker, he speaks to audiences of all backgrounds and ages and has authored the e-book What Are You Afraid Of? He speaks to business owners on topics such as success, leadership, attitude, goal setting, and association. He has been a regular speaker for the Future Business Leaders of America, and formally Camp Enterprise, sponsored by the Houston Rotary Club. Mr. Jones speaks at various churches on how success principles line up with the bible and to political organizations as well as having been featured at black history programs. Mr. Jones has been interviewed on several different radio shows to address issues such as business ownership, black empowerment, leadership, success principles, finding your motivation, mens and women's issues, and relationships. His motivational e-book, What Are You Afraid Of?, is available on Amazon. He runs and operates two businesses. Mjonesmotivation is a business that emphasizes finding your motivation and desire through positive channels and actions. He is a native Houstonian and has been married for eighteen years.

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Copyright © 2017 by Myran Jones.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017917288

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5434-6482-5

   Softcover   978-1-5434-6481-8

   eBook   978-1-5434-6480-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/15/2017

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Foundation

Chapter 2 The Character Of Our Women

Chapter 3 Why Do We Black The Way We Do?

Chapter 4 The Short-Term Economic Solution

Chapter 5 The Road To Independence

Chapter 6 Our Economic System Paradise

Chapter 7 We Need A Climate Change

Chapter 8 Who Are We Kidding? Pimping Is Easy

Chapter 9 The Double-Minded Society

Chapter 10 Closing Thoughts

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To my grandmother, Mary LaBome. When I first started talking to her about this book and what it would entail, she got very excited. She started to share some family history from when she grew up in Louisiana, which I never knew. We talked about many things over the years. From the time I was a little boy, we had a special bond. She worked in Pasadena, Texas, and would take me along with her from time to time in an era that saw a lot of racist attitudes in that part of Texas. For a period of time, I lived with her before I got married; and she noticed that all I did was work, work, work, all the time and told me I needed some type of recreation in my life. She bowled on Wednesday nights and encouraged me to join her team, which I did, and we would participate in tournaments across Texas and Louisiana. For a number of years we had fun together, finishing in the top ten in all but one year, when we finished eleventh. If I remember correctly, our highest finish was a second-place finish one year. I cannot stand alcohol, but sometimes she would call me and tell me to stop at the store when I got off work and get some Boone’s Farm, and then we would sit and drink it together as nasty as it was. But it was my grandmother and that is what she wanted to do, and I do not miss Boone’s Farm at all. We started a business and traveled across the country together, with me doing most of the driving and her sleeping although she always said she was resting her eyes. When my cousin played on a state finalist football team, the two of us were always attending the games together regardless of where they were in the state. I knew what she meant when she would call and say, Let me ask you a question. She would ask what she should do, and I would tell her, I cannot tell you what to do, and she would ask, What would you do? Whatever I told her, she did the exact opposite 100 percent of the time, and then I knew the phone call would be forthcoming in a few days or a few weeks saying she should have listened. She loved the horseraces and would always visit them on the weekends when I was a boy.

On September 24, 2017, my grandmother was killed in a head-on collision while visiting one of my cousins in East Texas. She told me she wanted me to finish the book before she died because she wanted to read it, and I did not accomplish that. The manuscript was a day away from being submitted to the publisher, and I was excited because I just knew I was going to deliver what she asked me to do. Although the pain is there, I take comfort in knowing that she has always been a road warrior and she died doing something she enjoyed. Since I did not deliver the book to her the way she asked me to, I have to place this dedication and her picture at the front so she can be the first person to ever read it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a long work in progress. Although we like credit as individuals when we accomplish something, no man has ever accomplished anything of value on his own. We look at our sports teams and there is always a focus on two, maybe three, players. In football, it takes twenty-two people to win the game. In basketball, there are a minimum of five who make it happen. If you run track as an individual, you still have a coach and a trainer. Everything in society follows a similar pattern. No one has exercised patience like my wife, Cynthia. She has dealt with me and my health challenges and me not being able to walk without assistance for quite some time. She has dealt with me procrastinating when the book should have been done yesterday.

My granddaughter, Almarie, who tells everyone that she lives with us, has been my greatest encourager. She wanted me to make sure her name was placed in the front of the book.

My parents have always been available when there may have been a need, and I thank them for always encouraging us to do our very best.

Marshall Johnson told me to write a book about fifteen years ago, and since he did not know what he was talking about, it only took me fifteen years to listen.

My sisters have always been my cheerleaders and have always been in my corner.

Craig Amos gave me a platform to write and express my ideas for his online black magazine.

Robert Wilson, the greatest running back I ever played with, has always called me when he felt there was a need to speak to an organization or partner with him to work with youth in some capacity.

To all of my friends on social media who have challenged me and made me study more, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Pastor Yuri Solomon has brought me into his church on more than one occasion to speak to his congregation on black history issues as well as introducing me to the organization, Jesus Is Alpha and Omega Ministries (JAOM).

I could go on and on about who had a kind word as I worked on this project, but that could take up a lot of pages and ink. Just know that I appreciate all of you and what you mean to me. If I did not mention you by name, please do not take it personally.

INTRODUCTION

All of us have done things in our past that we are ashamed or not proud of, are still doing things that might cause us shame, and probably will end up doing something else that causes us shame. I am not your judge because we are all human. In spite of our shortcomings, we should still strive to improve daily. If you are the type who says nothing about you needs improving or changing, you are the one who needs the most improvement and change. Yes, some things are ingrained in us all, but that does not mean you keep doing it if it is wrong. If something in this book does not apply to you, don’t take it personally. But take it personally to the degree that as a collective people, we need to be and do better.

As a group of people, we don’t know success language. Sure, we encourage our nerds to get an education because they don’t have what we consider athletic ability to play anything past high school. Since they only have academic talent, we encourage them to get that book education. But outside of that, we consider success to be someone who has attained a career as a professional athlete or television performer. The personalities in the black community that keep us distracted from our own purpose are professional athletes, actors/actresses, self-appointed black leaders, and preachers. All of these do an excellent job of keeping us from pursuing our purpose while each of them are working in theirs, and each one of them gives us a feeling for about two hours at a time.

When I was originally encouraged to write this book, I wanted no part in writing. For several years, I held true to that thought process. I did not want to write a book. Ironically, this is my second book, with the first one, What Are You Afraid Of, being a motivational e-book. Once I decided that I would move forward in writing this book, I thought about a focus on slavery from several different aspects—a history book to show where we originated or an economic book to show past successes of our ancestors. However, the more I read, studied, and watched documentaries, all of that changed. Our ancestors had a different mentality to endure what they did and to succeed beyond most people’s wildest imaginations. The producers did not allow traitors of the same skin to come in and derail the progress that they were making. They pressed forward, and for a people coming out of a bondage situation such as what they did, they accomplished mightily. With that in mind, I felt that my focus needed to be totally opposite from my original plans because there are many books written that show our success as a people. There are many books available that talk about slavery. There are also many books available that talk about civil rights and pro-black organizations. Somewhere along the way, we lost the fight of our ancestors; somewhere along the way we lost the desire to prepare our future generations financially, and somewhere we lost the desire to develop strong family units and communities. Even though our ancestors succeeded in spite of being closer to the institution of slavery, the mental slave shackles have thrust us into a dependent state that our forefathers did not have. It is amazing that the slave mentality skipped over those earlier generations right onto us. The original manuscript would have been well over five hundred pages, and in today’s self-education climate, not many people will sit and read a book of that length. As I am a motivational speaker, my focus has always been on the mentality and attitude that we need to have to succeed. So it became hard for me to talk about what we used to have and what we need to do to get back to it without addressing the core issue, which is our mentality. We can build and rebuild many businesses and communities, but without a success mentality of a prospering people and a moral compass that centers on integrity and character, all of our successes will be short-lived.

With that being said, I do cover some aspects of slavery, some historical accomplishments, and some economic accomplishments as well. There are sufficient amounts of books and information available for the individual who wants to know more about these specific areas. I have read many books in the process of working on this particular work. It is important that we know and teach more than slavery and the civil rights movement. We need our youth to know that we are a successful people. But we also need to know what it took to get to that place of accomplishment. We must understand why other races and cultures are outpacing us in every positive area and what and why we are being left behind in those areas. With this book, I plan on helping you see how and why we got left behind in all of those areas and who was and still are behind it. I am not the foremost expert, but I am very observant and study quite a bit. Some may get upset about my words on paper, but they will not get upset with some of the behaviors I point out. What you need to know is that it is not me you are upset with, it is your self that you have a problem facing.

As an avid reader, I personally do not like long introductions when I get ready to read a book, so I will take my own advice and dive right in. I hope you enjoy this journey not for me, but for you and your family and future generations.

CHAPTER 1

The Foundation

If we remove the man from the home where he has no purpose, no one to provide for, and no one to protect, he becomes a menace to society. If he has no purpose, he has no reason to live. After we have tried everything else, father still knows best. Society has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to subvert the headship, especially in the black home. During the period of slavery, the slave boss would use and abuse the black women in front of their men. He would do this with his gun in hand and force the man to watch at times. This put the black man in a position of weakness. After slavery had ended, the black man still loved and cared for his woman because she was placed in a terrible predicament as well as the man. She went back under the headship of her husband, and they worked together to build a family. This went on for almost a century, and the black man has been fighting for control of his family since forever. In the same decade that the feminist movement came to fruition, we had the Great Society program and the civil rights movement. This told the woman that the government would be her husband and her children’s daddy as long as she did not have a man in the home with her, and periodic visits would take place to make sure no man was living in the home. The government programs were not enough to do well but offered a little more than the black man, in many cases, was bringing home. When faced with this decision, the black woman, in her weakened mental state, sided with the government, to the detriment of the family. The black man was labeled a deadbeat father, even though he was not at fault many times back then. The government would then go after these deadbeats because of their nonpayment of child support, even though the government was the reason many of these men had to leave the home. By going after these deadbeat fathers and imprisoning them for nonpayment of child support, it gave the government the opportunity to lock up good, hardworking, and decent men. This action has had long-lasting consequences, one which is not allowing black men to vote anymore and creating a situation where they cannot be effective producers in society after release. The women chose money and dependency on their white absentee husbands (government) over a strong family unit, morals, values, and principles. Many men are menaces to society until the system gets a hold of them. Once incarcerated, many of those men are described as model prisoners. Why not be a model before the system grabs you? Do you have no self-discipline outside of what the oppressor can administer? This also created another situation. When the man saw that he had been removed from all responsibility for his kids, he decided to produce them like rabbits. The new slave bosses had proved that they would provide a meager existence for the woman and kids. The woman, knowing that her benefits would increase, welcomed this new moneymaking opportunity.

Our black men are suffering from an identity crisis. In light of all the black men saying that the Bible is not real, they have been misled by well-respected black and white misleaders. Our heritage has been so twisted and distorted that we have no clue who we are. If we turn to Psalm 83:4, we can see that an agenda was put in place to make us a people without an identity. Blacks have been suffering from an identity crisis for quite some time because we have been calling ourselves someone we are not. Our identity became wrapped in the thought process that our name would be carried far and wide based on the number of children we produce. Yes, there is unfairness throughout the system, but we must stop putting that in front of our youth on a daily basis. Turn off the television and have a conversation with your children instead of that generic, How did it go at school today? What would our community look like if our young men and women saw positive and successful examples of blacks throughout history instead of those with bad attitudes and low moral standards? What if we could let them know that we had black multimillionaires after slavery and long before the civil rights era? What if we taught them that many blacks employed thousands of people before the civil rights era during a time that was supposed to be so bad for blacks in America? What if we told them that black wealth increased exponentially right out of the slavery gates well into the 1930s and even leading up through the civil rights movement and what if we showed our children how to present themselves properly in society? Being well-groomed and dressing neat is not acting white. If we train them early, it becomes second nature as they get older. If our kids are taught that men in suits gain just a little more respect in society and we take them shopping for suits, they might be more apt to transition to thinking that they could own something instead of being owned. Let’s face it; when they get into the system, they have become property and have become owned. What if we taught our young ladies virtue and to keep it covered and closed? If we teach our kids properly when they are growing up, much of the poor behavior would be minimized. We are quick to excuse our poor parenting by saying the kids are not the same. Kids will always be kids. We have created a society that is more concerned with being the cool parent instead of just being the parent. It is cool when the kid is young, and it gets bad quick when he/she gets older. They will hate you when they get older for not teaching them right and wrong. How can that be said? If we listen to many of the court cases, the defense lawyers always bring up their poor upbringing, which they heard from their clients.

Let us share with them more than the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King. We need to share more than slavery. As a matter of fact, we should stop talking about slavery until they get to a certain age because programming is so very important in those early formative mental years. If all we talk about is bad, what do our kids have to look forward to? If we keep talking about the man that is holding them back without telling them that the man/woman that is holding them back looks back at them in the mirror each morning, we are doing them a disservice. We are a very successful race of people, even more successful when black misleadership and government stay out of the way. All doors do not close; we just have to keep knocking. What message does it send to our children when we discredit all of Ben Carson’s accomplishments because he thinks differently politically? Practically every black person we teach our kids to look up to are professional victims. None of them have ever built anything, but they sure know how to criticize the very system that is paying them to keep grievances in front of us. Just take a look at who employs most of your professional teachers of victimization and racism. Yes, the same people they publicly criticize are paying them to keep us agitated and feeling inferior. Think about every black leader, past or present, that we look up to and ask yourself, what did they ever build? Can you point to a business that employed blacks? Can you point to a hospital or university that they built? Can you point to an old folks’ home or country club? Yes, Booker T. Washington built Tuskegee, but he is ostracized right to this day because a black victimization leader said he was too soft on civil rights. So, we do not look up to him in our culture although he was personally financing civil rights court cases behind the scenes.

Reading through practically all of the history books, when black people are referenced, they are called Negroes, and they called themselves Negroes, not Africans. In the Zondervan Compact Bible Dictionary, it says that Ham is the progenitor of the dark races, but not the Negroes. Negroes and Africans are not the same people. At one point, West Africa was even called Negroland. Our young black men kill one another at will with no thought about the life they just took because they lack identity and purpose. They vent their frustrations against one another because they have some degree of fear about taking the life of a white person, although not much. They continue to live in fear of an invisible oppressor, so the best course of action is to take out frustrations on another perceived inferior human—his black male counterpart. Rev. J. H. Scott had this to say well over one hundred years ago: That a father may transmit to his children tendencies to vice and crime has been observed for ages. Moral diseases, it has been said, are like physical diseases. They are contagious, or epidemic or hereditary.

Since the black man has been described as a beast in historical past, and now by blacks themselves, it becomes very easy for a police officer or a person who fears a beast to pull the trigger, crime or not. The beast must be put to death so he does not harm anyone. Because of the displacement or outright irresponsible behavior of our black men, our young men have no one to teach them who they are. If you choose not to believe whatever has been created had to have been created by something greater than science, that is your business. Believe what you want; we did not evolve from amoebas, and if we did, what created amoebas? We did not originate from monkeys. Everything that we see in the visible was created by someone or something. In order for our young men to have an identity, there has to be some proper teaching. Man receives his identity from his spiritual father, not science. Can you imagine walking up to a scientist and asking him or her where they came from? It is a question that all of science cannot truly answer, although they will sound very intellectual in trying to do so. Man has to pass that identity to his son. Along with passing a spiritual identity, he has to pass on proper family identity. He has to say, This is who we are, son. Can children function without the spiritual aspect in their lives? Sure they can. However, at some point in life, questions will arise that science will never be able to answer. According to Dr. H. T. Johnson, If fathers would bestow one-half of the concern upon the souls as they do upon the bodies of their sons and daughters, which they usually are well fed, clothed and housed; if they would concern themselves by asking before birth more frequently and more seriously, what kind of name or character shall I transmit as their inheritance, a few more generations would dawn upon a race of giants, for the fathers of moral dwarfs and intellectual weakling no longer would exist.

Is the Bible God’s infallible word? That has to be questioned to a degree because there are so many versions that have been written to satisfy men’s egos and agendas. If you go back far enough, you can find a totally different Bible before the translations of translations took effect. However, in defense of the Bible, the core makeup is the same. But some translations totally do not make sense. There are many men, some in prominent positions as scientists and other professions, who have said teaching your children about God should be considered child abuse. Well, what should teaching children that man evolved from the tiny amoeba and the world just exploded into existence be called? What should teaching them that man walked on all fours and then learned how to walk upright be called? What should we tell them about us still having monkeys and apes if humans evolved from them? Men have no problem questioning a spirit being but accept a massive worldwide explosion as to how we arrived here. Many nonbelieving men say that we have never seen God so that means He does not exist. Well, we have never seen the wind or our thoughts before either, but we know both of those exist. Because many men have no spiritual head in their lives, they have put all assurance into men, or themselves. They question faith, but not fear, even though the definitions are basically the same. Both depend on an individual believing in something that has not happened. If there is no vertical line starting with a spiritual head, the male offspring will eventually suffer somewhere in life. Sure, believers suffer too and Matthew 5:45 says, When it rains, it does so on the righteous and unrighteous. If one had ever planted a garden or mowed a lawn, he will notice weeds growing right along with the good stuff. Life does not discriminate; the just and the unjust suffer.

Many men ask all the time, How can a loving God allow suffering, destruction, and damage? Because of His love of giving us freedom, He gives us free will and free choice. If we were not given free will, God would be a dictator. It goes back to the Garden of Eden. God told Adam every tree was good for him except one, but the choice was Adam’s. It was a test of obedience and discipline. When God told Abraham to bring Isaac as a sacrifice, it was a test of obedience. There was no security guard or alarm system that would stop Adam and Eve from the forbidden fruit. Nothing happened when Eve partook of the fruit. Adam had not properly informed his wife what God had said, so Eve could not be held accountable to a degree. Adam allowed another man, better known as the serpent, to run his house and tell his wife what God had said. This is exactly what happened when the Great Society came into the black family: the black man let another man (government) talk to his woman. Everything went awry once Adam accepted the fruit from his wife, who had taken counsel from another man. The family broke down at this point. Since the Great Society days, everything has broken down in the black family as a whole race. Adam was punished for taking the fruit and then blaming it on Eve and God. We can place blame on our women for accepting the exchange of government for man if we want to, but in the end, it lies with the man. Eve was punished because she knew who her husband was and decided to listen to another man anyway. Our black women are still being punished because she liked what the other man offered instead of what her husband was providing.

Because of sin, recompense happens. God wants us to choose to follow Him. It is just like a parent. The parent has rules, but sometimes the children do their own thing. As an infant, the child does not know right from wrong. As the child gets older, he has to be corrected and instructed of his wrong behavior. He has to be taught that there are consequences of his wrong behavior if he does not correct it. As he gets older, the earlier instruction should be in the back of his mind where he should be able to make wise choices. If he decides to make wrong decisions, the parent has to step in and correct that behavior once again and administer discipline in whatever format the parent decides. If that young man does not receive correction, society finds a way to correct it for him in the penal or slavery system. It is sad that many men never seek out God until they become incarcerated. Left to our own vices, the world would be in a much worse position than it is now. Because the Spirit Father cannot physically be in place with each and every one of us, He has given us an instruction manual. With this manual, it explains what will transpire if we are disobedient, just as explaining to our offspring the consequences of their wrong actions and behaviors. We cannot explain some of the mysteries of the Bible. If science was the all-end solution for everything, humans could live forever like the Turritopsis dohrnii. This jellyfish keeps reproducing itself, basically living an immortal life. If science was so great, humans could live forever because these nonbelieving scientists would be able to make it happen if they had all of the answers to life’s mysteries.

Not long ago it was shown that a man had his seventh heart transplant, but he still died. Science is trying to make us live forever, but when your number comes up, it is over. Science will never outdo that.

Turn off the television and have a conversation with your children instead of that generic, How did it go at school today? John C. Dancy said this, We must save our boys. The glory of any race is the manhood of that race. Develop that and all else will come apace. In order to attain this manhood, there must be the proper training in childhood … He must be taught that life is not merely beauty, but duty that its chief aim is not in leisure, but in work.

What would our community look like if our young men and women saw positive and successful examples of blacks throughout history instead of those with bad attitudes and low moral standards? The elegant Lena Horne had this to say, You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way.

What kind of life is it when our boys believe their self-worth comes from gaining street cred? We teach our youth that value is in material things and not life itself. Looking at society in all of its faults, many of our societal issues could be resolved if there were men, real men, in the home. Before we become unhinged, a father in the home does not guarantee that a child will do right, and having only a mother in the home does not guarantee a child will do wrong. There are successes and failures in both environments. However, studies have shown that having a two-parent home lowers the chances of poverty in the family and crime in the community. Having two parents in the home—a real woman and a real man—shows the children the proper roles of men and women. When a father is in the home, disrespect is at a minimum in most cases. Sure, young men reach an age where they want to test the waters, or as the older folks would say, smell themselves. When a father is in the home, he can teach his sons how to maintain things around the home, how to work on cars to a degree, and how to properly dress. He teaches his boys how to properly treat a woman. He teaches his sons that a man does not curse like it is his primary language in front of women, if at all. When a young man has only a mother in the home, his identity tends to suffer many times. He has seen his mother try to fill dual roles that she was not designed to. When a woman has