ClydeStyle

Category: Uncategorized

  • Reparations solution: Itemize

    There has been much discussion over the last few years regarding reparations, and as more people begin to understand the necessity of giving reparations, how to administer it will be the next conversation.

    What I have learned over the years is that nobody believes Blacks have been treated fairly, but nobody takes responsibility for the infractions. We have definitely turned a blind eye on the injustices and disparities created in our society.

    Also, people are still debating about slavery being the main reason for reparations, but I don’t believe anyone should be getting reparations for slavery. The reason is because there are at least 10 other reasons to do it.

    I won’t take the time to go through all of them, but we’ll look at a few just for kicks and grins!

    First, the Federal Housing Administration (FDA) was supposed to help all Americans get loans for housing. They had many payouts over the years but didn’t make their first payment to a minority until 1971 – that’s a 41-year problem because the FHA was established in 1930.

    Second, the police all across America have been predatory to Black males. This is easily proven by the unfair number of tickets, arrests, and conviction rates compared to other groups.

    Third, the real estate market has done an outstanding job limiting where minorities can move and making them live it areas where the property value is horrible. Moreover, they were extremely unfair in granting loans. They were biased when it came to loans, interest rates, amount of loans, credit criteria, and length of loans.

    Fourth, you would think that a person with the same experience, same education, and same ambition would get the same pay. Well, in America, white men have always gotten at least 38 percent more than anyone else for the same job with the same specs. This still happens today.

    Five, there have been laws created to expressly suppress, oppress, and stiffle the financial and educational wealth of minorities in this country.

    So, if we were to simply get the math wizards to calculate the damage of just these 5 things, we would get an idea of the true offense. It’s not a matter of just writing a check, either. You can not make up time and development, and something has to happen to ensure we never go backward.

    We have spent more than 75 billion dollars helping Ukraine in their fight with Russia. What about the fight we have here at home?

  • Have gun, will travel

    This phrase from the 50s is all about being ready to do anything. There was even a show about it back then, but the makers of this show would have never imagined that their callous attitude about the use of guns would be trumped by the views held currently about gun use.

    I wonder how many folks believe the founding fathers were thinking of automatic weapons when they wrote in the constitution for us to have the right to bear arms?

    What is more scary is that in recent months, there have been some really senseless shootings. There have been people shot for going to the wrong house, getting in the wrong car, standing around doing nothing, and going to a sweet 16 party. It seems as though the school shootings, church shootings, and other mass shootings are old news.

    Have we gotten bored with shootings?

    And then, Congress can’t seem to find the courage to solve this very simple problem. The answer is not as easy as changing gun laws or even outlawing certain guns because there are too many guns available.

    If we take the position that we all have to die of something or you feel that as long as it is not your kid getting shot, then who cares? It is easy to see how votes can be purchased for a price, and the NRA has deep pockets. Their average spending is around 3.2 million per year, buying the votes of senators and other law makers.

    The level of hypocrisy has to stop. Clearly, the answer will not come on a federal level. It has to take place state by state. Local organizing is the answer, and the time to do it is now. Have political power, will travel!

  • For the love of mom

    Not everyone is blessed to have a mother still living. Not everyone was blessed to have their original mom. There were some moms who were overcome by circumstances in life, and there were some moms who died in childbirth.

    Some moms were not good at mothering, while other moms could handle a large classroom of kids. Some mothers could earn a great wage, and others we rich in love. Some mothers are very spiritual, and some are great nurtures.

    But whatever your lot regarding your mother, the honor in the title is still a worthy effort. A good mom is worth more than silver and gold. Praises to all women who step up to the challenge to develop people. As cruel and as wicked as this world can be, mothers have made it bearable.

    God decided to make mothers because he knew we couldn’t naturally develop on our own. He knew how fragile we would be and how much time our minds needed to develop.

    He knew we would always need a cheerleader. We would always need someone in our corner, and we would always need someone who would love us when we weren’t loveable. We needed a defender, a partner, a style coach, a fixer, an encourager, and a protector.

    So this weekend we celebrate our first love! Give honor where it is due and give praise for what is good. It was God who gave your mother. May you forever be thankful for God’s second greatest gift.

  • May is mental health awareness month

    The month of May has been designated as the time that mental health professionals share and discuss nearly 300 mental disorders that are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

    America still has not accepted the fact that our nation is mentally sick and there is just so much that a person can take. Many other civilized nations have already begun to consider their citizens and have created laws that make counseling available and even mandatory in some cases.

    China, Italy, Japan, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany are among the leading countries who have decided to make mental health more than a talking point and have made laws in the best interest of its citizenry.

    A mental illness is a health problem that affects mood, thought, behavior, or perception. It would affect a person’s ability to function at work, in relationships, or in things you do every day.

    There are many disorders. People are suffering from mood disorders like depression; anxiety disorders; personality disorders; psychotic disorders; eating disorders; trauma-related disorders; and substance abuse disorders. The saddest part is that there are many folks in prison who were arrested for committing a crime associated with a disorder. In America, we put people like this in jail instead of giving them the help that they need.

    What’s worse is that we allow folks suffering with a mental health disorder access to automatic weapons.

    We need to continue to solicit our government to make policies that help those suffering from mental health issues and not ostracize them in our society. May is the month to make us more aware. Will you do your part?

  • Determination is our strength; guess where it comes from?

    Determination is the firmness of purpose. Resoluteness. Whenever we see success, determination showed up first. To live life knowing where you’re supposed to go is a beautiful thing. It allows you to step with assurity and act expeditiously.

    Obviously, this state is not so easily attained. Many get paralyzed in their desires and crumble at the stress. When there is no “handout” in sight, can you get the job done alone? Ignorance, prejudice, stupidity, pressure, and focus are always against us. It’s a battle whether you have succeeded or failed we all will have these struggles.

    Then, our upbringing at times is a hindrance to our future because either someone loved us too much or not enough. Perverted things happened that affected our lives forever or we had a loved one missing which left an empty space in our hearts. We were bullied, discouraged, cheated, lied to, and hurt.

    Finally, we lacked the proper examples, we never saw someone else do what we desired to do and we lost our sense of well-being. It was as if there was a conspiracy set against us. But deep down in our souls is a glimmer of hope.

    Now hope is commonly used to mean a wish: its strength is the strength of the person’s desire. This would be fine if there had been no challenges or disappointments in your life. But in the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. This means that you have a blessed assurance of trusting in God to bless your efforts according to his will.

    Watch how this works: This would mean that you would never trust a man, you would never even blame a man for his folly. Everything that would happen to you would be viewed as part of a grand scheme by God that ends in your benefit. Completely trusting God and living a life to please him is the greatest thing for a man. The Bible teaches us to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. It then promises that everything else we need would be given to us.

    When you read about God’s people in scripture try counting all the rich people. Adam was rich — he was the only man on earth. Noah would have experienced this as well being the head of his household. Abraham and Isaac were rich. We literally saw Jacob obtain his wealth. Job and countless others lived extremely well and I believe they were blessed in this way because God saw their heart and knew that wealth would not ruin them.

    The point here is that determination begats success but believing in God begats determination. We come into this world being memorized by what we see. I want you to ignore what you see and live life knowing.

  • New venture! Enjoy!

    https://open.spotify.com/show/3CXKjEMPAuFmArItXeMOZg

  • Celebrate the women you love!

    I don’t believe women are celebrated enough!

    I mean an argument could be made for celebrating anyone but from a male perspective, our female partners have a lot to put up with in life. They are still looked at as second-class citizens in regards to wages in America. They can’t seem to turn off their nurturing abilities meaning that in today’s society they do a lot more of nurturing grown men than kids.

    Women make things beautiful, they are long-suffering, forgiving (most of the time) and extremely helpful. Most of them are resilient, patient, compassionate and strong.

    When a woman is happy she can effect an entire building with her happiness. Her wrath works the same way. Women are fighters, like their animal counterparts they will defend their children with their very lives.

    I wonder how many women are the sole support of their families? During the absence of men, women have had to be everything to everybody and they hardly complain. Whenever a women is not able to do this it’s because someone somewhere ruined her. They clipped her wings or took something so precious from her that spoiled her will to thrive.

    A woman is similar to water as she is strong enough when she needs to be, comforting enough when the situation calls for it and can adapt to any situation you put her in.

    This holiday season we need to go all out for the women that make the trials of life much easier to bear. What would we do without them?

  • Do you seriously care about causes?

    One of the great things about living in America is the freedom to protest. This government claims it will defend your right to do just that. I have to say “claims” because I still have the images of the protests during the Civil rights movement where water and dogs were used on peaceful protesters. Also, within the last 5 years with the Black Lives Matter movement and how brutal the police were to them.

    But my point is that causes are connected. It’s almost impossible to just protest one thing because chances are there are several issues within the cause you want to champion.

    Then, we tend to fail in the areas most important with causes — our solutions suck!

    For example, once upon a time teen pregnancy was shameful and the idea that you may get pregnant was a good deterrent for abstinence. Our country at that time was conservative and had a much better observance and reference for the word of God. There were government agencies that controlled what was acceptable over the airwaves and we made sure that what kids could see and learn in media would be something beneficial to their development.

    There were definitely protests regarding unwanted pregnancies and then adoption was the main source of handling them. Then some where the pregnancy dynamic became worse and some women (mostly poor and disenfranchised) sought their own methods of handling the problem (sometimes with a coat hanger of all things). Then Congress sought to solve this issue and put a bandaid on our unwanted baby problem and abortion was legalized. If you can’t beat them, join them philosophy.

    Now before abortion protests started, did we not see the deterioration of the American family? Did we miss how sex was overused to sell everything? Where were the protests for these because this is still happening today.

    We are depleting our resources, making animals that don’t belong to us extinct and using persevatives and additives in our foods that are slowly killing us. What’s our big cause again??

    The largest drug in America is not opiods, it’s sugar. Sugar is responsible for more degenerative diseases then anything else. Where are the protests?? Of all the “walks”, “races”, and “marathons” for cures, we haven’t cured a thing. Our health care system makes the majority of it’s money treating us instead of curing us and their prices are astronomical.

    Is it possible to have a cause of abortion, but not murder? Aren’t they the same thing. There are Christians in this country who are quick to protest abortion but won’t even speak of an unarmed Black man being murdered by police. We protest fur coats, but could care less about the treatment of pigs, chickens and cows.

    We would do well to check our causes so that when we protest (and I believe we should) we can be more productive with our solutions and actually make life easier for others. And above all else, we must avoid hypocrisy!

  • History and truth need validation

    We live in a time that has the phrase “fake news” circulating through our language. Most of our country looks back at history and tries to cover up the wrong doing because of guilt. In fact, the further back we go the worst it gets. Our country is very divided which was the intent of some. We actually have people who are hoping for another civil war. Because of all these things and more, our history needs to be fact checked and validated.

    The greatest reason for this is so that we don’t repeat the mistakes. It’s always difficult to hold someone accountable in their ignorance. And it’s even more tedious to suffer someone through their wrongdoing. It really becomes taxing on everybody because our ignorance and forgetfulness tends to effect us in great numbers.

    Recently, the Queen of England died. She was on the throne for 70 years and whether she was a figure head or not, that monarch has a ton of innocent blood on it’s hands. Colonization of countries was their specialty and to reign over a place that terrorized countries for a living is not fashionable at all. Their entanglement in South Africa, Jamaica, Barbados and other places was absolutely horrible. But I guess if you live long enough people forget. She lost family members recently because they could no longer endure the racism. But I digress.

    America has a reputation for building weapons on mass destruction, incarcerating it’s citizens and racism. The Bill of Rights and freedoms we have on paper are great until they aren’t. Sure there are worse places you could live but measuring and comparing us based on our resources and what’s actually possible for us to do, we are definitely found lacking.

    This is a perfect place to live if you are wealthy — but that’s only one percent. For the rest of the 99 percent we have varying degrees of contentment and down right bankrupt individuals who are barely keeping their head above water. We have been repeating our past and finding better ways to be convert in our repeats. Our problems are systemic and design to maintain the status quo.

    As a country, we need to figure out exactly what we are trying to do and be honest about it. If we really have a plan to continue to disenfranchise citizens then say that. But based on resources, our country could be a place where everyone thrives.

    We need the correct history so that we can be more tolerant of each other. There are way too many injustices to name here but if we really wanted to correct the problems we have to start with admitting the wrong.

    We need a history check and an honest conversation about what type of country we really want to be.

  • Vengeance doesn’t belong to us

    Humans are capable of great fits of rage. When anger is kindled there is a loss of level thinking, blood runs high and irrational behavior follows. Some of the dirtiest deeds in the world have come from human anger.

    Biblically we were told that vengeance did not belong to us. It was a property of the Almighty! The creator of the universe promised that he would repay. I wonder is that because he knew that we were not equipped to deal with anger?

    When a person gets anger the worst of that person can be seen. They feel the need to be vindictive by any means necessary. People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by power, by authority and by the desire for status. They basically don’t want to lose face. A person described as vindictive is usually someone who holds a grudge and who always tries to get back at people who they think have wronged them in some way.

    Vindictive people retaliate against others for any insult or perceived slight. Vindictive people do not let things go but rather must seek revenge to satisfy a burning sensation within to play God.

    Psychologically speaking, revenge is more of an emotional state that is triggered when one feels they have been attacked or wronged by another party. It runs on impulse and if not controlled it will destroy whole families and friends.

    The best way to handle your anger and prevent yourself from possible legal trouble is to examine the potential stressors in your life and decide if they are absolutely necessary. Look at the things that matter to you the most and see which areas you are most vulnerable. Some people are very sensitive about their personal life. If you are one of those people then you probably should not have pictures of your family displayed at work and double check your social media privacy settings to make sure you are in complete control over your content.

    Moreover, it would be wise to review your friendships and decide how much access to you they can have. Make sure that you separate your very close friends from mire acquaintances and have close friends who you can talk to when life gets stressful.

    Above all, work on your de-escalation skills and make sure you drink plenty of water and definitely get enough sleep. Regular exercise needs to be apart of your daily routine. Try your best to live peaceably with everyone.