How Joel Leon Sparked The Medium in Me.

Bound by the pages of my own prose….

I tossed my writing on the desk………….

As I aimlessly scrolled through the usual gamut of social media sites on my iPhone looking for something that would switch on my brain from its current snooze mode. I stumbled upon an article by Joel Leon titled “What Kind of Black Are You?” that caught my eye. Here I am feeling super African American while reading through the first few sentences. My name means Beloved One in Ghanian for Pete’s sake…I love being black. What more kind of black could I be?

Then boom it hit me as my mind lit up like the dashboard of the Delorean from Back To The Future causing me to zoom in on every word “The New Black will write books about Blackness and teach us about reparations,will make songs about Jackson 5 nostrils and dance with Black berets at big ass football parties.” The brilliance of the poetry alone had me scratching my chin. I was hooked. Joel Leon made me take a step back and dig into the topic of society choosing your blackness for you.

I finally reached the end….And after much mind wrestling. I attempted to answer the question for myself. “What Kind of Black Am I?”

Thank you Joel for expanding the conversation on an limitless closed end question.

We need more conversations such as these and this is why Medium and the brilliant writers it contains has become the place to be enlightened,whisked away, and neatly packaged in pandora’s box before being dropped off at The Ego and the id front doorstep.

I leave you with this quote from rapper Jeru the Damaja……

“Let us now discuss the mental attitude.
The mental must always stay calm.
You must let nothing move you
Be it good or bad.

For when the mental cannot be moved.
There is no longer good or bad, there just is.
When there just is.
You have the power to form and shape”