Thought for the Day:
“Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on your values rather than your desire for personal gain.”
Question for the Day:
Do you forfeit your values in the name of advancement?
Hi everyone! I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me and I apologize. I’ve been trying to figure out how to upgrade this site on my own and have failed at all my attempts miserably. At one point, I was so confused and overwhelmed that I was tempted to just scratch this blog entirely and start something new. But, then I decided it ain’t that deep and if this is just a little slice of the internet where I can express my thoughts, then maybe this will continue to do for now. But I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard to write when you’re frustrated and just flat out uninspired.
Real talk, I’ve been battling a pretty significant spirit of pessimism since Trump was elected to the presidency. However, it’s not just him, (even though a HUGE part is him and the traveling circus better known as his White House administration). But it’s also all these public racist stunts, school shootings, constant threats of war, and our country’s general lack of respect for God and life that has caused me at times to wonder if trying to inspire people is even worth it. Is our society too far gone at this point? Is anybody even open to hearing something new and trying to understand themselves or others better when we seem to be more lost and divided than ever before? At present, a whole lot of folks seem to have fallen into the “sunken place” with no foreseeable way to “get out.” So I figured, it might be beneficial to examine a real life illustration of this and Omorosa Manigault is a prime example of how dangerous it can be to sip the wrong tea.
If you’ve seen the movie “Get Out” then you know what it means to have fallen into the sunken place. But in case you slept on the movie, “Get Out” tells the story of a family who uses manipulation, lies and eventually hypnosis to gain control over a person’s body and mind. The person who has “fallen into the sunken place” becomes entranced and is no longer in charge of themselves and therefore cannot express their values. Their personality is hidden so deeply within that he/she is unable to access it and act on their own behalf. In short, their mind is controlled by someone who just wants use of their physical being, but does not want them to think for themselves. Now in this movie, the family committing these atrocities was White and their victims were all Black. There was this theme in the movie that the Black mind is dangerous if not controlled. It was fine to use a Black person’s body, strength, and abilities so long as the mind was disengaged and replaced with the mind of whatever White person paid the most money to “purchase” said body.
Now, I know that sounds left field as heck as a movie plot and sometimes I wonder what Jordan Peele was smokin’ when he wrote it. But it was one of those movies that kind of sits with you and you can pretty quickly find deeper meaning in it once you get past the initial shock of… “What did I just watch?”
I started thinking of all the people in real life who seem to have fallen into the sunken place. As a matter of fact, if I could blame the mindsets of people like Donald Trump and his supporters, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Kanye West, and almost every new school trap rapper on hypnosis, then I might feel a little better about the world. But sadly, many of the people whose actions leave me completely befuddled are totally responsible for their own thoughts and behaviors. But since this is Get Lifted Girl! and I’m especially sensitive to the empowerment of other African American women, I felt the person most appropriate to be the poster child for a “Get Out” PSA would be Omarosa because she not only fell into the sunken place, but invited herself to the auction and set her own price.
Now, despite my natural tendency to root for most African American women who achieve public success, I never really cared for Omarosa who was introduced to the masses on Donald Trump’s reality television show “The Apprentice.” As a Black woman myself, I know that it’s often difficult for us to get the respect that we deserve when we’ve been historically stereotyped as angry and difficult. So when a woman like Omarosa who has the advantages of intelligence, beauty, drive and a top notch education (from my alma mater Howard University no less) PURSPOSELY decides to market herself as the cutthroat “angry Black woman,” she very quickly got the side eye from me.
So few of us are awarded the platform that comes with celebrity, so you would think Omarosa would use hers to uplift her people and challenge the unfavorable narrative surrounding the image of Black women. Yet instead, she chose to play into those negative stereotypes and allow them to further her career in reality television. Now all of that was bad enough, but when Donald Trump hired her as Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison, my side eye turned into the screwface.
I wondered how on earth she could justify shuckin’ around town with a man who had done nothing but insult, degrade, and mistreat people that look like her. It’s one thing to abandon decency for fame when it personally benefits you. However, it’s quite another to allow someone like Donald Trump to do it at your expense. You know how when White people say, I have plenty of Black friends, but it’s really just that one? Well, I’m pretty sure Omarosa was Trump’s one, so of course he had to call in a favor since she owed him big for her D list celebrity status.
Even a self-proclaimed “very stable genius” like Trump must have been baffled when his heartfelt appeal to us “Blacks,” who dodge stray bullets in the slums of Chicago, didn’t budge when he asked “What do you have to lose?” when appealing for our vote. So, enter Omarosa who Trump figured ( like Kanye West, Steve Harvey, Ben Carson, and sisters Diamond and Silk) was just the right person to talk some sense into us. (insert massive “angry Black woman” eye and neck roll here) I’m not going to give anyone the satisfaction of doing it in real life, but there’s certainly no harm in typing it. IJS
Omarosa couldn’t have been blind to his history of racial discrimination, shady business dealings, and multiple accusations of sexual assault against women. Most people with common sense do their research on any potential employer, so she must have come across all his slurs against African Americans, even once saying that he didn’t trust a Black accountant to count his money and said “laziness is a trait in Blacks.” I can’t imagine that she didn’t at least wince when he called Mexican Americans “bad hombres” and implied that they were all “rapists.” What did she think about Trump suggesting that we return to “stop and frisk” policing when Black Americans are already disproportionately arrested, beaten and even killed by police? What did she think about all the years he tried to delegitimize the first African American President by challenging his citizenship? Wasn’t she concerned that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed the man who would be signing her paychecks? And as a woman, how did she reconcile that her new boss was caught on camera bragging about “grabbing women in the p*****s?” I mean seriously, I could go on, but what kind of delusional experience must this woman have been having to decide that ALL of that was indeed just “fake news” and insignificant in comparison to her desire for a seat at the devil’s‘ table?
Well long story short, she got the job, didn’t win “the Blacks” over, and once again had to hear Donald Trump say “you’re fired!” as she was dragged from the White House. She’s since attempted a lackluster return to reality television in an attempt to garner public sympathy for her poor choices and has warned America that we’re all in serious trouble with Trump in office. She’s laments to fellow cast members on the “Celebrity Big Brother” couch that “it’s not going to be okay!”
News flash Omarosa, not only have we already gotten that memo, but we tried to get you to read it when you were stumpin’ for Trump but you kept returning to sender.
But here’s the thing, Omarosa is not dumb and she knew what she was signing up for. She was willing to sell out her integrity, values, and community if it meant a chance at personal success and financial gain. Trump knew this about her from her days on the “The Apprentice” and I imagine he intended to use her greed and lust for fame the same way he planned to use the color of her skin to win the election. Omarosa allowed herself to be hypnotized by the lure of power and then cried victim when she realized how deeply into the floor she had fallen. While the rest of us were screaming for her to “get out,” she was giving us that eerie soulless smile like the entranced souls in the movie.
She thought she was making moves to secure her future, only to soon realize that Trump hadn’t planned for her to use her mind or call any shots at all. He wanted her physical being, but he had no intention of giving her a voice. Every time she took the podium to sing Trump’s praises, she was reporting live from the sunken place and didn’t even know it.
I hate Omarosa ended up disgracing herself and I hope she can gain some clarity and make better choices going forward. But the rest of us can learn a valuable lesson from her experience. Avoiding the sunken place will require knowing your values and standing by them, not using others or allowing yourself to be used, surrounding yourself with righteous and like-minded people, clearing your own path to success instead of riding someone else’s coattails, valuing dignity over worldly success, and keeping good company.
Playing dumb, wearing blinders, ignoring your intuition, rejecting sound advice, and making deals with the devil in the name of personal advancement will always be a recipe for self-destruction. Not only will you lose respect for yourself but others will eventually lose respect for you as well. There is no success that is worth your peace of mind and spiritual health. And when it comes to your soul, God was, is, and will always be the highest bidder. Let’s not keep wasting time trying to renegotiate the terms of life to determine if the world can offer us more than what God has already given. Always remember that Jesus has already paid the ultimate price, so any subsequent deals would be fraudulent anyway.
“For what does it profit man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
Mark 8:36
