"Here I come to save the day"
This rant is dedicated to Brittney Newsome, the family of Sandra Bland and all my sisters and daughters engaged in the struggle for justice and equality for people of color and for women.
There is a special place in my heart for all the mothers who lost their beautiful babies to senseless violence. I carry these sisters with me always.
We have developed a very effective and very human method of coping with stress and threat. We ignore it. Media finds a distraction for us and we just lean into it. Consequently, while Black churches burned and our dead lay unburied, we rode the sweet chariot all the way back to that imaginary land where invincible, Black women save us from white supremacy and Black presidents sing Negro spirituals a cappella.
O say does that Confederate banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The murder of Trayvon, an unarmed innocent, ripped the Band-Aid off America’s 150-year-old cancer. The cause of his death was “
born of America’s painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order—that blacks have their 'place.'” Trayvon did not die in a ghetto, he died in a gated community, and that pissed us off. We paid for Trayvon’s safe passage and he did not get what we paid for.
Those of us, who got out of the ghetto, did so on the backs of, rather than in spite of, "disposable blacks," those who simply "refuse to act right and prosper.” Uneducated," and sometimes felons, these ones paid for our safe passage out by entrapping themselves, not trying to keep us back.
We pay for our new “place” with "relentless, unyielding perfectionism" to “pass inspection and withstand scrutiny.” The price we pay for our “place” at the table is twice as much education, twice as much skill, twice as much effort, and twice as much commitment as those seated around us. We are not stealing "pound cake;" we ARE raising the hell out of our children.
We paid for Jordan Davis’ safe passage and he did not get what we paid for. Mike Brown graduated from high school and Sandra Bland graduated from college. They were owed a safe passage for at least a few more years but we were shortchanged. We paid for our grandparent’s safe passage in church and a mouse like Dylann Roof squeaked, “You people” and once again, we return to our original “place” in an old familiar script of brown subjugation from which we opted out. The role in this script is one that we are sick to death of playing.
We numb our pain with ministry. We pursue civil service to realize one part, of one sentence in the Declaration of Independence, that self-evident truth “that all men are created equal.” Traveling to work, we pass relics of supremacy; memorials and flags resurrected to remind us of our “place,” erected just a few years ago, when we fought for a better “place” for our families and the Daughters of the Confederacy fought back.
...to keep people afraid and scared and intimidated, to keep black people thinking that we are less intelligent and less beautiful, to make sure we are still dominated in our minds, that we still have slave mentalities.
We are no longer afraid because we no longer accept that we are less. The color of our skin is just the color of our skin. We know that we are no different from people whose skin is any other color. Inside we have the same organs, the same color blood, and all of the same feelings. Yet, according to
Dylann's precious little manifesto, we are the ones deluded.
Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe.
The conversation after the pool incident in McKinney, TX grew exceedingly antagonistic, and foreboding. Reminding us of our presumed "place" in Section 8 housing touched an eyeball and denying our law abiding, POLITE children access to a community pool paid for with our blood, sweat, tears was more than we could tolerate. The McKinney interchange went somewhere we have not gone in public since 1963. That they forgot their hoods and exposed their
employers, reveals just how much they had lost their damn minds. Our hate cup overflowed. Drunk with indignation, we all missed Dylann Roof on the horizon, a Frankenstein monster of inflexible, unfiltered, entrenched, personal prejudice. Dylann is our spawn, the progeny of free speech in hyper-drive. Yes, we have dialed down the rhetoric, but not in time. Not before Dylann's diabolical siblings emerged in
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and his dastardly grandfather appeared in
Lafayette, Louisiana.
The slayings in Emmanuel AME Church left us all, including the most ardent racists, speechless. Dylann murdered our elderly in their own church, a church as old as slavery and familiar with cruelty. At least a few of us began to doubt that the universe has a moral arc, because after 400 years, one would think that it would have bent toward justice just a little bit by now. There was no excusing Dylann, and though they gave it a shot, Fox eventually conceded the visceral hatred behind his act. Only someone mentally ill would do such a thing.
We know, of course, that Roof expressed hateful white supremacist opinion. But we also know that psychiatrically ill people can channel their paranoia or depression or extreme self-loathing into bizarre beliefs that sometimes lead to the destruction of others. Those beliefs can look just like intense hatred — of a particular person or a whole race of people.
Dylann’s evil deed was too much for anyone to embrace. Not one
Supremacist dared claim Dylann. The on-line race baiters scattered to their holes. The bullies ran home, leaving us seething, and our anger swinging in the wind. Suddenly someone spotted the
Confederate Flag waving high in the sky when all other flags were lowed to half-staff. Look out! We had a fight!
Black folks wanted to beat up on someone to forget how impotent we felt, and the Confederacy would do. America deserved a beat down for the very public 21st century lynching of our children for their “obnoxious behavior in public. The curt dismissal of our anger and too frequent use of the word obey by White people, as they suggested ways we could all get along, made us want to vomit. And then there was the mocking. Yes, we were more than happy to forget our frustrations and beat up on a flag, thank you very much.
Nine bodies lay unburied in Charleston. We were feeling the power of innocent blood, but the families of the innocent ones had no choice but to wash the murderer clean with the blood of Christ, and instead of a riot, we descended into that “
middle ground between light and shadow” that “lies between the pit of man’s fears, and the summit of his knowledge,” where the massacre never happened, the KKK is extinct and Black churches are not burning down in the south. Bree the Hero helped us stay in the twilight zone where little Black girls can actually save White people from their own racism.
We chose the blue pill, and for a week, we forgot the boot imprint on our neck. Decent White folks happily took the blue pill too and signed on to fight a big, bad, piece of cloth because this entire country needed a break from the madness and we needed to soothe our raw nerves and we needed a win. Missing our Band-Aid, we wrapped ourselves up in the Confederate Flag.
The debate over the flag was not pointless. Those of us, who learned the sanitized version of American History, received new unabridged lessons. Although the majority of White people disagree, the Confederate Flag is no more a southern heritage symbol than it is a symbol of rebellion when painted on the roof of the General E. Lee. Feelings are not facts and the facts are that the flag symbolized the pledge of allegiance for a new government, formed in the middle of an existing one, for the expressed purpose of maintaining white Supremacy.
In his 1861 “Cornerstone” speech, Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, left no doubt about what the Confederacy represented when he rejected the idea that slavery was a moral wrong: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
When the supporters of the traitorous government surrendered in 1865, the KKK held on to the flag as they purged the South of Black voters,
murdering over 1000 people until, in 1898 they folded their little flags,
packed them away in mothball-filled trunks and rode off to the Spanish American War.
White supremacy was the glue that put this country back together and Jim Crow was the knife that spread the love. Jefferson Davis insisted, “White men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where White men fill the position here occupied by the servile race.” It seems that they can only be more if we are less. Even Dylann, in his sophomoric manifesto, understood the importance of segregation to white supremacy, when he wrote that segregation “protected us from being brought down to their level.”
A new zeal for the flag resurged nearly a hundred years after the Confederacy by rebels in the Democratic Party who, imitating their ancestors, formed a new political party right in the midst of the old one. The Dixiecrats message was as clear as that of their grandfathers. "We stand for the segregation of the races.” If the Confederate Flag is indeed a symbol of rebellion, the second time around, it signified White defiance to court ordered integration, “an ugly reaction to the remarkable progress,” of the Civil Rights Movement both in the North and in the South. Resisters of the draft and oppositionists of the Vietnam war also adopted it.
Even a war waged against a piece of fabric requires a hero. 30-year-old Brittany "Bree" Newsome scaled a pole and she battled our enemy. She is a beautiful,
Black woman, a perfect physical model for a superhero. We needed Bree the hero. We chose Bree because “
Black women are magic.” Without even knowing anything about her, we labeled this
self-proclaimed activist and filmmaker, invincible, bad assed, defiant. This
Strong Black woman refused any financial assistance, even contributions toward her bail. In her words, “
I did it for all the fierce black women on the front lines of the movement and for all the little black girls who are watching us," She said, "I did it because I am free.”
"Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber halps me into carriages, or ober mudpuddles, or gibs me any best place!
And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked, "And ar'n't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! [And here she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power] " I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ar'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -- when I could get it -- and bear de lash as well! And ar'n't' I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern *, and seen 'em mos' all sold off the slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!" And ar'n't I a woman?
Black women have resisted the feminist movement because our issues in this country are light years behind and light years ahead of the issues faced by White women. We are not on the same page. We have ALWAYS WORKED. Our mothers left us with our grandmothers and lived in the home of White families, caring for their children. Our Black mothers pushed Black daughters toward college, so that we could work in an office and not clean toilets. Black women, who have not experienced it, dream of the pedestal that White women and some Black women disdain. Black women are drawn to the feminist movement because we are tired of being booty-dropping bitches and hoes. We long for protection from rape, discrimination in the workplace, and violence in our own homes. That the Ravens paid Ray Rice $1.6 mil to terminate his contract, and the court slapped him on the wrist for knocking unconscious, his not quite wife, Janey is not surprising to most Black women. Crimes against Black women are barely considered crimes. More of us are coming to understand that feminism is liberating, allowing us to be exact what it is that we want to be, "but with a political consciousness."
The Strong Black Woman, “bastard child of racism and sexism… developed as a way to excuse the subhuman treatment of female slaves. Out of this experience developed the notion that black women were mysteriously bestowed with strength enough to withstand inhumane treatment of any sort.” Rejecting feminism, Black women drag 400-year-old chains into the new world, clinging to a patriarchal, slave religion, and Big Mama's counsel that any man is better than no man at all/I don't need no man, I can do it all myself ridiculousness. We settle for second class status, imagining that one day, someone will notice how little we take and how much we give and they will appreciate us. We pass on the burden to be twice as good to our daughters and tell them that they must jump through hoops and hurdles and climb poles to earn something that we already possess. Our oppression is, in many ways, very different from that of Black men. Even a successful civil rights movement will not provide equal rights for Black women, who earn 64 cents to the White man's dollar, and who suffer higher unemployment and underemployment than Black men. The Black woman's struggle is for worth, value, a sense that someone in this cold, cruel world actual loves us and wants us. Sadly, Black women fight for the equality of Black men while at the same time we try to earn our own equality through good deeds and heroic acts.
According to pop culture and media, we are also the workhorses. We are the castrating harpies. We are the brawling World Star “hood rats.” We are the cold, overeducated, work-obsessed sisters who will never marry. We are the indefatigable mamas who don’t need help. We are the women and girls who are unrapeable; who no one need worry about when we go missing.
Strong Black woman syndrome is a survival mechanism that has long since lost its usefulness. Strength beyond what is normal, for Black women is, “
an overused asset" that developed without “evaluation and attention to changing needs” and it has become a “liability” for us. We are valuable, desirable, and loveable exactly the way we are. We have nothing more to prove and we can take a pass on another Black Superwoman caricature.
I'll never be big enough to pay your dues
But I keep trying
And you just keep on making me jump through hoops
What do I got to do?
I just want you to look at me
And see that I can be worth your love
I just want you to look at me
And see that I can be
Good enough, good enough
Good enough
For "the little black girls watching," there is a Black woman living in the White House. She is a lawyer, a wife and a mother. Another woman with brown skin lives in South Carolina's Governor’s Mansion. The "fierce sisters on the front line" need look no further than the Attorney General of the United States, a Black woman who does not have to climb poles to take bad guys out.
If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.
Challenging stereotypes and refusing to sacrifice ourselves to become a “mule for the nation” on a whim, is the beginning of freedom. To be less physically strong does not mean that we are less. It means that we use our brains instead of our biceps. True freedom lies in “
questioning the status quo and advocating for a world where strength need not be the most important precursor to success.” Asking for and allowing others to help is a sign of strength, not weakness. No one should expect that we bear that which is unbearable. Not man and not God. Strength of character sometimes lies in talking a sister down off a pole instead of cosigning a unacceptably high risk to her liberty and her life. Bree, please do not climb anymore poles.
It was decided that this role should go to a black woman and that a White man should be the one to help her over the fence as a sign that our alliance transcended both racial and gender divides. We made this decision because for us, this is not simply about a flag, but rather it is about abolishing the spirit of hatred and oppression in all its forms.
Since human trafficking began in this country, Black women have encountered two types of White men. There has always been White men who loved and supported us. There has always been White men who humiliate and brutalize us. Sadly, Bree's sojourn on a pole did not trigger a paradigm shift in this regard.
Sandra Bland did everything right. She graduated from college, paying for her future with precious time and effort and she deserved to have what she paid for. Sandra was astute, acknowledging, "being a black person in America is very, very hard." But Sandra crossed paths with a sadist intent on putting her in her "place." In a society that interprets every emotion a Black woman displays as anger, Sandra was amazingly restrained and present during her encounter with Brian Encinia.
Sandra was a proud Black woman. She held on to her dignity and insisted that Officer Encinia respect her humanity and citizenship. She concluded correctly, that she was interacting with a "pussy," and not a man. She could tell that Officer Encinia was operating outside of the law and that she was at his mercy, forced to play a role in a script her slave sisters played 400 years ago, and Sandra did not want to play the role but she could not stop the train wreck.
Ms. Bree flashed for us a gorgeous smile as the police placed her in handcuffs. It betrayed her oblivion. She placed her head in the lion's mouth and assumed that those who arrested her would play by the rules. She prostrated herself to a justice system that is not known for justice. As an activist, she should have known better. However, it was more shocking to see just how many of us jumped on the "Bree is a hero" bandwagon. We should be ashamed for applauding such reckless disregard for the life of a young Black woman. If Black WOMEN'S Lives REALLY matter, our respond to Bree's theatrical stunt was reprehensible.
It is a bit surprising that the NAACP hailed Bree as a hero. 25 years ago, the NAACP attempted to have the same Confederate flag removed through legal means. In 1992, they lost a circuit court ruling and switched to economic sanctions against Confederate Flag cities. In 1999, they called for a tourism boycott. In 25 years, not one member of the NAACP climbed on top of that pole and pulled the flag down.
Police used a Taser and pepper spray on David Washington minutes after he suffered a stroke and lost control of his car. Levar Jones was shot as he attempted to comply with an officer's request to show his driver's license. Atlanta Hawks' Thabo Sefoloshasuffered a broken right fibula during a dubious arrest by the NYPD. Victor White and Chavis Carter "committed suicide" while handcuffed and locked in a squad car. An unknown person murdered Matthew Ajibade, while he sat handcuffed to a chair in a police station. We cannot forget what happened to Freddy Gray.
Black women are fodder for sadistic cops. Few of us heard about handcuffed Alesia Thomas kicked repeatedly in her groin until she died. Camera footage shows two cops punching a woman nine months pregnant. Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old grandmother was knocked down and beaten by a California Highway Patrol officer.
If Sandra could speak to Bree, she would probably tell her the same thing that innocent Black women who have spent a few days in jail would tell her. Jail is no place for human beings. If you are innocent, cops make sure that you are strip searched over and over and over again because they believe that we love to hide contraband in our orifices and they are determined to prove that we are not as innocent as we claim to be.
Lost of liberty is the same as lost of humanity. There is no dignity in shackles or cheap soap that dries out your skin. Jail is full of bright lights and loud noises and 5am wake up calls so that you can prepare to sit before a disgusting breakfast of oatmeal and white bread that you would not consider eating. They do not serve coffee in jail and you cannot smoke cigarettes.
There is no comfort in Jail. Everything is hard as a rock in jail because everything is made of steel and concrete. In jail, no one talks in a normal voice. They scream at you as if you are an animal. They remind you with every interaction that they are superior to you. Your cellmates are women who are either mentally disturbed or mentally challenged. Jailers order you to stand in a single file with these women and face the wall at all times. They shackle your leg to the leg of another woman and herd you, like slaves through the facility.
Your spirit dies rapidly in jail. After the second day, you spirit abandons you and your body is left to endure the continuous assault to all five senses simultaneously. You curse god for allowing evil to triumph and you question his existence. You plot revenge on the dirty dog police officer who lead you into this special place in hell. You replay every word you said to this Satan in your head and wish that you had not left the house, or turned right or stopped at the store. You berate yourself for not putting out the cigarette or for not ignoring the condescension. If only you had played the role. You know the role because you played it a trillion times before. You regret that at that moment you felt that you just could not bend and scrap even one more time.
On the third day, you believe every negative thing, every emotional abusive person in the history of your life ever said about you. You believe that you are a miserable, damaged person, who deserved and deserves every unkind thing that ever happened to you. You have no hope left, only bitterness and shame and sadness and rage and feelings of betrayal and abandonment. If you were not mentally ill when you arrive, by the third day you are doubting your sanity and you are having outer body experiences. Your mind says to your body, "you might be stuck here, but I'm leaving."
There is no justice, there is no god in jail and there is no reason to live anymore because the world belongs to people like Brian Encinia and Darren Wilson and Dante Servin. They fashion this country, and no matter how hard you try, how long you go to school, how much you learn, how fabulous you are, they will always control your life and that sucks.
In jail, you feel that your life is over. The bosses of sadistic cops do not care that they are criminals, but your boss would never believe that you were arrested for doing nothing wrong. Police reports are spurious documents filled with perjury and scandalous lies, but when signed by police officers, they are the holy grail. Your arrest record is public for two whole years. And you spend the rest of your life explaining any conviction.
Our young women do not belong in jail. Not because they are women, but because they are Black. Sandra was not in control of the circumstances that placed her in jail. In her dysfunctional way,
she tried to force her perpetrator into recognizing her womanhood and shame him into letting her go free but it did not work. Bree deliberately placed herself in harm's way. There is a very big difference between breaking laws that are unjust, and acting foolishly, based on an unsound plan that lacks rhyme or reason. In our current police state , which shamelessly uses gestapo tactics, we best understand the different.
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
The
concerned citizens group that supported Bree’s action “hoped” it would prompt state leaders to keep the flag down.” They “did not expect that it would be raised again,” Using a magical Black woman and magical thinking, this group “took it upon [themselves] to do the hard part and take it down." “All
they had to do was
keep it down.”
Not surprisingly, the flag remained down only for 45 minutes. "They"(whoever that is) had no idea that they played a role in this caper so "they" didn't keep the flag down. Two Black men suffered the indignity of raising a new Confederate Flag in its place. Willie Hampton, an African-American who said he saw Bree remove the flag worried that this is going to bring a bunch of riff raff about the flag.”
It was naive to imagine that climbing a pole and removing a flag was the "hard part." Rev. Clementa Pinckney played a more difficult "part" his entire life. He passed that symbol of hatred every day on his way to work or worship. He did not climb the pole. He fought for civil liberties from a seat he earned at the table and he was no less a hero. He preached about love and justice although he never experienced either of these in full measure from his own country.
Rev. Pinckney’s family was not cast in an easy role in this sickening tragedy. They allowed his body to lie in repose inside the Rotunda of the Capitol building, steps away from that offensive piece of cloth. No doubt, it was hard for Eliana and Malana Pinckney to pen letters to their dead father. It was definitely not easy for us to read the last words that Jennifer Pinckney wrote to her husband.
You promised me you would never leave me! You promised me we would be together for years to come! You promised me we would watch our children grow, get married, and have children of their own. You promised me that we would grow old together and spend our latter years without the demands of the Church or the State. I feel robbed, cheated, and cut short.
We cannot even begin to imagine how hard it was for Felecia Sanders. Her son called out to her, “Mom, I think I've been shot in the head. Why is he doing this?” She lay in his blood, protecting her granddaughter while Tywanza took his last breath. Showing strength beyond anything that this country had a right to expect from her, she washed her baby’s blood down the drain, and went to the courthouse to face his killer. When most of us would have called for holy hell to rain down on Dylann’s head, this hero prayed that God would have mercy on the murderer of her son. What she did was selfless and heartbreaking. We owe it to her to make sure that no mother ever has an experience what she experienced. We owe it to her to get this done.
The Flag came down, not because a Black woman risked her future to take it down, but because a woman of color, Nikki Haley did not react but responded. While we hailed Bree the conquering hero, we nearly missed the events that actually brought the flag tumbling down all over the south. We ogled Bree climbing a pole, but it was relentless protesting, pressure from sports organizations and corporate juice at work that brought the flag down, and for good. Those responsible for erecting the flag were the same ones who removed it and placed it with the rest of this country’s relics.
The fight for civil rights has never rested on the shoulders of one person. Claudette Colvin was the first Rosa Parks. History barely remembers her because she acted alone and she was “prone to outbursts and cursing.” The Supreme Court affirmed our right to ride anywhere we wanted on a bus, not due to an act of civil disobedience, but a lawsuit and a boycott. An entire network formed the Underground Railroad. Had Harriett Tubman acted alone, she would have led hundreds of slaves to their death.
There are individuals who have acted impulsively and their impulsive acts have earned them a place in American history. Whether we can consider these young people heroes is debatable, but we cannot deny their place in history.
The picture of Allen Bullock with an orange cone in his hand, appearing to smash the windshield of a police vehicle is iconic. One film frame captured the pulse of an entire community. Yet, that child spent 10 days in jail,assigned a bail twice as high as the police charged with the murder of Freddy Gray and Bullock faces eight misdemeanors charges with a possible sentence of five years to life.
Edward Garner was just 15 years old when he broke into a house and stole a purse. His attempt to escape the police almost succeeded, until one officer shot this young boy in the back. History memorialized Garner after his father sued the state of Tennessee for excessive force. A Supreme Court decision now forbids law enforcement from using deadly force to stop fleeing suspects who are unarmed.
Justice for all just ain't specific enough
One son died, his spirit is revisitin' us
Truant livin' livin' in us, resistance is us
That's why Rosa sat on the bus
That's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up
When it go down we woman and man up
They say, "Stay down", and we stand up
Shots, we on the ground, the camera panned up
King pointed to the mountain top and we ran up
Emmit Till’s mangled body mobilized the civil rights movement. Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner focused an entire nation on the brutality of disenfranchisement. After Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin for “standing his ground against a meddling, bullying, wannabe, the world watched our perverted system of justice excuse his murderer. Young bodies and especially Black bodies have always formed bedrock of the civil rights movement. The Trayvon verdict was like a battle cry for children all over the world.
Freddy Gray broke no laws but he is dead.
Tamir Rice broke no laws but he is dead.
John Crawford broke no laws but he is dead.
Jermaine McBean broke no laws but he is dead.
Rekia Boyd broke no laws but she is dead.
Mike Brown died on his feet rather than live on his knees and it broke our hearts. Trayvon fought like a champion, but his death nearly ripped this country to pieces. The bitterness of the words spoken by the mother of Jordan Davis, Lucia McBath, continues to haunt us.
We always encouraged him to be strong. To speak out. We tried to teach him to speak what you feel and think diplomatically. In my mind I keep saying, Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?...I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out.
Racism is a WHITE problem and White people have to solve it. White people put the flag up and White people took the flag down. White people brought us here, subjected us to inhuman conditions and refused to acknowledge our humanity. Only White people can change how they feel about people who have brown-skin. White people deputized ruthless men to recover escaped slaves and protect White people on one side of the tracks from brown skinned people who lived on the other side of the track. White people have to change the mandate of the Fraternal Order of Police.
Just as men can choose whether to align with feminism and work for gender equity, White people can choose whether to turn away from defending systems that are literally killing people of Color while we benefit.Racism is about the ways that virtually all of the systems in which we live (economic, educational, judicial, medical, and so on) were created to serve White people (particularly White, cisgender, straight men) while oppressing people of Color. And even with major reforms over time, this is still true. So if we only see racism as flying the Confederate battle flag over a state capitol or as an individual racist gunman, it makes sense that we get so damn defensive when the topic of race and racism comes up. Few of us want to be associated with that blatant hate.
White folks get it. They know that the problem is bigger than a flag. After the Trayvon verdict, the number of young White people protesting on the streets spoke to their understanding of racism. Black people should get out of their way and let White folks handle their own problem because they are the only ones who can fix this and most of them want to. There are more decent White people than there are racist cops and confederate flag toting miscreants and we should believe and embrace that.
So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing.
The conversation that ensured after the Mc Kinney TX pool fiasco was one of the most contentious and productive conversations we in this country allowed ourselves to have publicly about race in many years. 15-year-old Brandon Brooks exposed our bias like chickens coming home to roost and he remembered to do it in 16:9 aspect ratio. Brandon is an undisputed hero. Had he not filmed the incident - how many of our children would have cases pending right now? He did not plan; he did not decide; he simply acted.
Grace Stone confronted an armed, out of control police officer, to stand in defense of her friends. She risked her life to reveal the truth. Her bravery indicted the adults who stood by and did nothing during Eric Casebolt's rampage. Removing a flag from a pole required none of the bravery that this child summoned to respond the way her parents raised her to respond, standing up for what is right, even at their own peril. Had she not spoken up - who of us would believe that a grown person would tell children to go back to their Section 8 housing?
Debbie Dills followed ruthless killer Dylann Roof 30 miles before the police were able to apprehend him. She placing her life on the line to do what was right and what she did is absolutely heroic.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons.
Those of us who are now grandparents cannot believe that our grandchildren must endure the same kind of hate that we experienced as children. Black billionaires, Black astronauts and even a Black president, have not rid ourselves of the stench of Jim Crow. We are thankful for the brilliant insight of Jon Steward who explained, "Race is there, and it is a constant. You're tired of hearing about it?
Imagine how f*cking exhausting it is living it."
Black people are not here to teach you? Ah, but we are. We might not like the role, but that is the role. It is the sole point to protest. We have to teach, because that is literally all we can do about racism and that IS the civil rights movement.
As Dylann reminded us, “almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply beause of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness.”
Black people view everything through a racial lense. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lense. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldnt be thinking about race.
Black women have no magic. We are not fierce. We constantly set ourselves us for failure, trying to do the impossible. If Black lives matter, then we are obligated to hold our own lives more precious than we currently do. “To pursue truth and justice is to live dangerously…let us focus on what really matters: the issues, policies, and realities that affect precious everyday people catching hell and how we can resist the lies and crimes of the status quo!”
"Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me." Dylann Roof wanted to become a hero too. However, power concedes nothing without a threat and one person simply is not much of a threat, no matter how much magic they imagine they have. No, Bree is not a hero, and Black women might not have magic, but we are not powerless. There is power in our pen, power in our voice and power in our pocketbook. We are our most powerful with both feet on the ground. It is with our real power and not our magic that we can bring racism to its knees.
We watch with glee our children marching and marching and marching but we know that not all the marching in the world will make the walls of Jericho fall down. Oprah dared question the strategy of Black Lives Matter and received a caustic response. Variations of this same movement have castigated Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and shut down a Netroots conference preventing presidential candidates from responding to their very valid concerns about the daily murders of young Black men. Black activist over the age of 50 are walking on eggshells so as not to offend the sensitivities of these nouveau activist. However, if our counsel comes from a place of love and genuine concern, we must provide feedback, even when it is not enthusiastically received. We cannot let them shut us up because they need us and we owe them the truth. We owe them the benefit of our wisdom and life experiences. We owe them a slap on the behind when they misbehave. This is not a game,this is real life and real death. The devil in no longer just in the grove.
One has only to look at the pictures of protestors to see thousands of people with gray hair, both Black and White standing side by side with young men and women. Those of us who started this fight want to finish it. We mean to go to war with Geneva Reed-Veal. She did not just put her baby in the ground. She put our baby in the ground and we too want to "light somebody up". We are not done yet. To the death...
Bree, the beautiful Black woman and activist is good enough exactly the way she is. Bree does not need to become a superhero to earn our respect. None of our children do. They already have our respect. A hero is what happens when you stay on your path and “you walk this out.”