A couple of weeks ago I ran into I ran into
an old retired professor friend of mine who I’ve always loved and respected. Whenever we see each other, we always talk about how students nowadays are not
as engaged in politics, and how they have a different level of respect for
their professors, and also how they have higher expectations of themselves. As
usual I agreed and probably threw some random statistic that was swirling
around in my big head at her to explain, possibly, how we found ourselves in
this situation. I recently mentioned a murder in my building (something I’m
still trying to figure out two weeks later) and how it really didn’t surprise
me that this happened within the confines of my “nice” building. And then she made the jump to talk about Black-on
Black crime and “why it’s always the Blacks against Blacks.”
Lately, I’ve grown weary have to explain my
hyper-Blackness to people. Dammit, can I just be?
Meanwhile…………the main story line for Black
males in this country is you are under a certain age is that you are guilty
until proven innocent and that you are automatically presumed less than and are
required to defend your humanity and your citizenship at all times. Remember the conversation regarding the
Seattle Seahawks Richard Sherman as it relates to race? Throw in him being a
brown skinned dude, with dreadlocks, and he was loud as hell.... that made him a threat? Richard Sherman’s loud mouth to the wrong
white dude could have easily gotten him killed just as Jordan Davis’ loud music
got him killed….literally!
This has also to do with the problem white society
has with historically Black colleges and universities. Nobody has a problem or even cares about historically
Black public schools…the Thurgood Marshall’s, the Martin Luther Kings, the Adam
Clayton Powell’s, and Frederick Douglass
elementary and high schools that occupy our dark inner cities. Wonder why there have never been questions about the need for their existence? Likewise, nobody questioned the need for the Mormons
to create Brigham Young University or why Jews send their
children to Brandeis. But let somebody talk up for historically Black colleges
and universities, then suddenly all hell breaks loose in this supposedly
post-racial society and you’re accused of being a reverse racist.
BUT PLEASE NOTE THE PATTERN HERE……
Now, all of a sudden, there’s a problem with Black colleges: historically Black colleges and universities; why do you need Black only television networks: Black Entertainment Television; Black power movement; Black liberation theology….it’s the fact that it says Black. Tell the truth, it makes some white people uncomfortable, no matter how liberal they say they are, to see us Black people self-identify as Black. I’m Black. Deal with it.
Now, all of a sudden, there’s a problem with Black colleges: historically Black colleges and universities; why do you need Black only television networks: Black Entertainment Television; Black power movement; Black liberation theology….it’s the fact that it says Black. Tell the truth, it makes some white people uncomfortable, no matter how liberal they say they are, to see us Black people self-identify as Black. I’m Black. Deal with it.
It’s bothersome as hell to me because no
one person raises an eyebrow on St. Patrick’s Day when everybody of Irish
heritage comes out of the woodwork. Even
still beyond nationalities, no one raises a funk about folk of Latin descent
celebrating their own, but as soon as the actual word “Black” has to be
attached to a name, a title, or anything then suddenly society shifts the
narrative placing a negative association to it, and if it is a Black male,
criminalizing it. This shit is illustrated by my old professor friend when I disproved
just that because you see Blacks on the news committing crime doesn’t mean
whites aren’t. She didn’t even want to
accept that as even a possibility, only wanting to focus on the fact that these
were violent crimes, murders and drug related crimes. She even said to me,
“well hasn’t it been long enough” when I attempted to trace some of these problems
back to Reconstruction. Really, I didn’t
even know where to start.
I don’t feel the need to defend my gender,
my race, my ethnicity, or my Blackness.
I shouldn’t have to hear victims family members automatically go into
defense mode when a Black boy gets killed.
It’s something fundamentally wrong when young Black boys have to get two
“The Talks” when being raised in this country.
While white boys are being told about the birds and the bees by their
parents, Black parents are telling their Black sons about how to act when
pulled over by the police, or how to be unassuming when you walk into the store
so that you don’t get accused of shoplifting just because you “look”
suspicious. My black skin alone makes me
a suspect.
Let that sink in for a moment: my black
skin automatically qualifies me as suspicious when I walk into a store.
When I started riding the bus by myself for
the first time, one of the first things my mother told me was that I need to be
careful how I carry myself because I was big enough that people might think I’m
older than what I really am. That was my
mother’s code word for saying “You’re a black kid who’s 11, but you could pass
for 15 and people may automatically criminalize you for no reason just because
you’re a Black boy”, in 1968! This is a reality
for many Black folks in this country. This is a second America that white
privilege has wondrously insulated many from having to ever visit or live. Hum?
I am Black and beautiful–at the same
time. To be Black in this country is being
seen as “other” at best, and “less than” at worse, but ultimately such a
self-identification automatically marginalizes our existence. But I ask the
question, why do we live in a country where being pro-Black is seen as being
anti-anything else? Why does one’s
self-determination, self-identification and self-definition as Black become
something negative and even criminal at times?
This is what racism has produced. Systems were in place for so long that there
is no author of racism. None! There is
no wizard behind the curtain operating the levers on some of this de facto
racism. While I do honestly believe there are members of the 1% that make these
power play moves that directly affect us Blacks when it comes to for-profit
management of the education system as well as the prison industrial complex,
and the likes of the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch’s owning large news
media, they are merely responding to the sentiments that many white people
hold. They feed on those fears to generate large profits from the
fear-mongering.(FOX NEWS)
The parallel with the character Radio
Raheem and Jordan Davis are almost scary!
Radio Raheem, the character from Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,”
through a series a unfortunate events
ended up killed by the police in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood on a hot
summer day because he didn’t turn down his music.
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