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Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health Issues
(BEBASHI)
Contact: 215-546-4140
Address: 1233 Locus St, Ste. 401 Philadelphia, PA 19107
Abstract: BEBASHI is a community based program which provides information, education client services about sexual health issues, particularly HIV infection and AIDS to the Afro-American and Hispanic communities in the Philadelphia area. BEBASHI provides technical assistance to minority organizations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. BEBASHI's educational efforts include a wide range of activities: general community outreach utilizing existing organizations and the media; programs for children, youth, and women; and targeted risk reduction for gay and bisexual men, intravenous drug users, and prostitutes. BEBASHI also provides free, confidential or anonymous HIV antibody testing and provides counseling for people with HIV infection, their families, friends, and other concerned persons. BEBASHI utilizes workshops, seminars, and presentations on civic and social groups, churches, schools, professional associations, and community advocacy organizations. The Children/Youth Program emphasizes sexual responsibility, decision making, and abstinence. Street outreach educators distribute literature and condoms in areas of drug traffic and prostitution and in areas frequented by runaways.
Publications: BEBASHI publishes a number of brochures in English and Spanish on AIDS and a quarterly issues oriented newsletter.
Data Base Service Limitations: The brochures are available for a fee.
Videotape Summary - Dr. Betty Ward Fletcher
Key points:
- Community Mobilization is actively engaging various sectors of the community in common pursuits
- Focus should be on what we can do in our community to be actively engaged in what needs to be done
- Move beyond "intellectualizing" to "action"
-have house to house discussions with each other to build support
-abandon the notion of being in a dilemma; the dilemma is we don't use those things we used to use
- "Cultural fortification" or cultural insulation
Cultural traditions within the Black family which have historically served as modes of family fortification that can insulate the family against adverse influences of a larger society
Examples include the
-concept of universal parenting (every adult is perceived as a parental figure with a set of attendant expectations for young people)
-use existing untapped resources that include the involvement of social and civic organizations in mentoring relationships with Black youth
-incorporation of heritage and history in positive image building (parents and children must have a positive sense of self)
-practice of rituals (families must be encouraged to have rituals which result in strong ties and engender a sense of connectedness
-valuing of the wisdom od elders (who are the keepers of our history and can pass it on to the next generation)
-identification of personal mentors (who can serve as personal resources when we get troubled, stressed, etc.)
-concept of spirituality as a fortifier in the Black family
- Everyone needs to decide what his or her little piece (of action) is going to be or what they will do back home (to do something about the church, crime, health, etc.)
- Call to action is embodied in ten two letter words: If it is to be, it is up to me!
Videotape Summary - Dr. Wade Nobles
Speech entitled: "Resistance to Revolution to Revitalization: The Rebirth of a Race"
Speech begins with his ritual of asking permission to speak from an elder in the audience. Followed by giving praise and credit to the source of all knowledge and wisdom (he calls the source by many names--Almighty God, Amun, Patah, Jehovah, Obatula, The Christ, Chango, Allah, Oletumari, Ra).
He poses the question: "What is the real issue when it comes to the rebirth of our race?" Critical issue is to examine the question of resistance? revolution? revitalization? rebirth?
Asserts that the real issue must be put in the context of a greater issue and that we must be honest about the issue in order to understand what drug addiction is all about.
African resistance must be put in the context of white supremacy, color racism and ethnic genocide.
Suggests that if we don't analyze properly the question, whatever answer we come up with will be wrong. We must be critical in our thinking and not get caught up in what other folks' definition of what our problem is.
Sees task of white racism and oppression as the psychological dehumanization of African people. Instruments and efforts are part of a greater design to dehumanize African people in terms of their material and spiritual conditions.
Believes there is a systematic attempt to destroy African people, e.g., destruction of the family and deconstruction/emasculation of the African man.
Aim is to destroy African people by altering the African consciousness through drugs.
Believes we must exercise "principles of conduct" rather than random acts of experimentation.
Our task is to examine white racism and recognize that it is a social system that is driven by a set of ideas that determines what people do regardless of who they are.
Racism is an unfounded hatred and fear of people who are phenotypically different from you. It is accompanied by the desire and belief that one has the power to dominate and destroy that which is hated. Racism breeds a system of genocide.
Genocide is the systematic, deliberate destruction of a people by acts of omission and/or commission designed to destroy their life force.
The ideas of the war on drugs, building barbed wire fences around projects, taking crack babies and placing them in orphanages are genocidal systems even if the person proposing them is guiltless of genocide. It destroys the life force of a people.
It is our life force that is the essence of our Africanity. It is that which transmits our hereditary character and information about what it is to be. Believes that every living being is inspired and excited about the responsibility to pass on to the next generation its hereditary character except Black Folks. Suggests that we are the only ones who run after other models of other folks.
Asserts that we don't see the responsibility to pass on to the next generation that they are an African being; that they ar an African woman; that they are an African man; but are too busy trying to figure out how to be something that we are not.
Feels that the most insidious aspect of racism is that it teaches (overtly and subliminally) Black people to hat themselves...if we hate ourselves everything that felts our image, purpose and interest, we will reject. It suggests that which is Black is antithetical to excellence; ...antithetical to vitality; that which is Black is worthy or rejections and to be human is not to be Black.
Suggests that we are prone to drugs and violence because racism results in our having a self destructive disorder.
Most import drug to eliminate Black peoples' ability to do for themselves is the drug of "white thought."
A consequence of racism is that it systematically destroys that which is natural to us--our cultural symbols, precepts and icons.
We must assert that we are not up from slavery but "down from the pyramids."
Another consequence of racism is that it separates Black people as individuals from our compelling cultural symbols such that we see ourselves as individuals and not as connectors on a spider web. Everyone of us is connected like the web which is why we "feel" what another Black person is going through or is evident when Black folks get together.
Another consequence of racism is that it alienates us from one another and forces us to make an artificial connection.
Finally, self negation is the last consequence of racism. It is the act of always putting ourselves down. Black folks struggle with identity and we must define what is normal.
Suggests that we go back to "Culture is the healing stuff." (Reviews his definition of culture.)
Our mission is to build for eternity (like the pyramids).
Culture is the core. We must take back, reclaim, rescue our culture or else we will take on someone else's culture.
Culture is to human as water is to fish. (Here he describes in vivid detail the saltwater and freshwater fish analogy):
If you are a saltwater fish, you don't want to be caught in freshwater. If you are a saltwater fish and you go out of your water, your coloration changes; your schooling patterns change; mating preferences change; your ideas about what it is to be a fish begins to change. What you see is a saltwater fish running to a freshwater fish looking for a freshwater fish psychologist to help them become satisfied with being a saltwater fish! Result being--you find a saltwater fish developing drug abuse problem.
We must create environments that ate conducive to our own nature. We must examine rituals, attitudes and behaviors that are indigenous to us that give us general designs for living.
Psychological well being of an individual/person depends upon the cultural well being of a people. If our culture is not well, then we are not well.
When the symbols of culture lose their legitimacy, then people become insane and we see disruptions in behavior.
Describes the concept of "ontological principle of consubstantiation"--we are of the same stuff--tells the reason why we understand what our mother's stare means without uttering one word ("it is in you...because you know better").
Finally, he tells the story of the Boosa people, a tribe of African people from the Gambia region:
Boosa people began each new day with a chant:
"Resistance, Revolution Rebirth." The Boosa people would wake up and upon the birth of a new child, the Boosa people would say to the men, "the new child is born, respect and protect;" (repeat); the Boosa people would say to the women folk, "a new child is born, respect and protect;" (repeat); the Boosa people would say to the child, "reproduce and refine our best;" (repeat); the Boosa people would say to the old and the old would say to the young, "in you God is pleased" (repeat). All the Boosa men and women would understand that the rebirth of the race requires us to "respect and protect; reproduce and refine our best."
He concludes by saying that the Boosa people are Blacks in the USA!
We Are.....I Am
No culture defined with exactness,
No measure for the depth of our Blackness.
Proudly we proclaim our birth---------
from the womb of the Mother Earth.
We are tawny, bronze and gold-----
light as sand and black as coal.
The soul transcends the color of skin
Our heritage is the strength within.
Our essence cannot be defined,
renamed, reshaped or be refined!
Our countenance like the thunder's roar;
Our grace like the eagle's soar!
When questions prevail, tis' no mystery,
Answers are found in our history-
So we will journey, hand in hand--
to revisit the Motherland.
Let us all join in the celebration, of unity, trust
and determination.
We must be committed never to shirk, the duty
of collective work!
Empowerment is faith and humility!
Take the message to the community-----
Mobilize a common unity!
If we're rapped up in words-
we'll never hear it!
Look inside--connect with the spirit.
Our destination depends on whether--
We choose to take the journey together!
To do or die, it is our choice--
to speak again in just one voice!
And though sometimes the way seems rough,
--I know that what I am is enough,
Because We are--I AM!
Phantom Poet
IAAM/TOT--Washington, DC
September 12, 1993
Affirmations, Proverbs, Sayings...
- Fruit don't fall far from the tree
- Service you render is the price you pay for the service you render
- No matter how high you get, you still daddy's little girl
- What goes around, comes around
- You're the best and everybody else can be as good as you are
- The family that prays together, stays together
- The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away
- Birds of a feather flock together
- God works in mysterious ways
- An empty wagon makes the most noise
- Straighten up and fly right
- The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
- I brought you into this world and I can take you out
- Don't let people piss on you and tell you its rain
- What your mind can conceive, your can achieve
- Change the "I" to "E" in bitter and make it better
- You meet the same people going up, as you do coming down
- Dance to the rhythm of your own drum
- To thine ownself be true
- Look to the rising sun
- Remember who you are and whose you are
- Don't ever say never
- An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
- Idleness is the devil's playground
- Get somewhere and be somebody
- Haste makes waste
- Whatever you do in the dark will come to light
- Your eyes are bigger than your stomach
- Don't take my kindness for a weakness
- Loose lips sink ships
- Children should be seen and not heard
- The early bird catches the worm
- Don't write checks that your behind can't cash
- When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion
- Do as I say do and not as I do
- It's a po' rat that ain't got but one hole
- Woman can point up, longer than man can point down
- Where are you going?
- Keep living
- You reap what you sow
- New broom sweeps cleaner, but an old broom knows the corners
- When you point the finger at someone else, four are pointing back at you
- To whom much is given much is required
- Respect your elders but be careful
- You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink
- Do it right or don't do it at all
- Every tub gotta sit on its own bottom
- A hard head makes a soft behind
- Don't forget to love one another; it makes life easier
- Be yourself or be by yourself
- Play with a puppy and he'll lick your face
- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
- You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink
- You make your bed, you got to sleep in it
- Get that switch and pick off the leaves