The Assimilation degree...

"Resistance is futile"  ~ The Borg (Star Trek Next Generation)

In my favorite version of the Star Trek Series, The Borg, a cybernetic expanding collective who travel around the Delta Quadrant destroying everything in their path. Assimilation of every known species is their agenda. If you're a fan like I am, you can still wonder if such a force is possible, if there ever was or ever could be a superior race of beings that simply force their way through time and space destroying culture and civilizations in the blink of an eye.

I began reading Marvel comics as a kid. Like millions of other kids, I loved Spiderman, The Avengers... but more than any of them, I loved the X-men. The original X-men: Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, Angel and Iceman. As the group transformed and grew, then split off into other factions, I tried to keep up, but other distractions, girls, bikes and music got in the way. My love for the X-men remains today, and while I don't read comic books any longer, I love the big screen epics that roll out every couple of years. It keeps me young.

I love sci-fi. Not so much the stuff of today, but I definitely loved The Planet of the Apes movies, James Bond is still my favorite human hero, Star Wars, Alien, into today with Lord of the Rings and so on. There is a lot of similarities in these works of art...ok fiction, but to the true believer it's most definitely art. Good versus evil, the struggle for a better humanity, a better universe. The Borg believed that assimilation was the easiest most direct form of destruction. The X-men fought Homo-Superior (mutant) versus Homo-Sapien (human) and other mutants for the right to be accepted as different but equal. Magneto believed that only the mutant should survive that mutant-kind was indeed the ultimate development for all of mankind. Hatred manifests itself in many ways. These ideas albeit fantasy are manifested from our own world, and deal with issues we have been dealing with for hundreds if not thousands of years. Since the beginning of time, man has railed against those who are not similar, those who are different, those who do not look, sound, or pray like us. Ethnic cleansing is the worst case scenario now... genocide, the extreme elimination of one specific culture because of a failure to... assimilate.

Assimilation has happened. Right here in our lovely island, ok the Borg may not have taken over and we may not have been assimilated as such, nor are we in any race war (not yet anyway) but a lot of our cultural and racial identities have caused blacks to assimilate to the only known culture they can accept. A white man's world. The hard part of all of this is that while not wanting to deal with the issues of being black on a personal level, the assimilated black man has forgone his attempts at an identity for a seemingly harmonious place in the white man's power structure. It is indeed a very sad thing. The struggles of the civil right leaders, the blood of millions has faded into a distant memory and for the most part they have been assimilated. The white man's unrepentant path has devoured the souls of those who are too weak to fight. 

Thank god, that isn't the case in every situation. Thank god there are quite a few black men and women who are not so ready to concede everything, are not so ready to be assimilated. Thank god we can still dare to dream as MLK did. It is an important thing... identity. Fighting for it. Standing up for equality on every level and moving beyond hate. The hard part is getting those who have assimilated to understand that it is indeed important to be black. It is important for those who are bi-racial to NOT be consumed by their whiteness and allow themselves to be accepted in BOTH areas of society. Last but not least it's important for WHITES to not be so damn uptight about it. Blacks needing to be BLACK is not a threat to our security, far from it, it's a chance for Whites to move beyond assimilation, move beyond the systems that forced blacks to assimilate, and let a proud culture of diverse elements emerge as one nation!

namaste _//||\\_