When I was an adolescent, I would spend every summer with my paternal grandmother in Alabama. My siblings and I called her “Big Mama.” She was filled with knowledge and wisdom, although her academic antecedence did not exceed 3rd grade. I learned from her a lesson I’d like to share with you.

She said: “Never let nobody make you feel bad and get you all ‘riled up’ by claiming you look like this or that. When folks call you names, ‘they be talkin’ ’bout they self.”

Subsequently, I learned in school that Charles Darwin posited a theory called “Survival of the Fittest and Evolution,” wherein he claims all humans evolved from lower species like apes and monkeys. Now there are some who disagree, they hold to a theory that they call “Intelligent Design.” Generally, they claim that humans exist today as they always have, based on the ‘Seven-day/Genesis model.” However, their position, unlike Darwin’s model, is not considered scientific. Those holding the “Intelligent Design” position are mostly the right-wing nuts and their zealot followers. The very ones who like to call African Americans such names as you describe.

Anyway, I later learned that the field of “dynamic psychology” supports Big Mama’s position that when people say, or think, things about other people, they are often expressing how they feel about themselves. It is called the “defense mechanism” of “PROJECTION.” It is mostly an unconscious thing, but sometimes it is conscious. Either way, it’s always ascribing ones own thoughts and feelings unto others.

Now do this: Google “Rheus Monkey.” And then decide for yourself whether it looks more like our beautiful First Lady, or the one(s) who is/are circulating the pictures.

After that, let’s get back to the serious business at hand. We need POLICIES to address the economic distress in our commmunities.

I don’t know you, but I love your spirit.