As I was scrolling through my Facebook timeline (probably my first mistake) and I saw a headline for an article that just completely blew my mind.
"Charleston church shooter hears victim's kin say, 'I forgive you'" To me this is mind boggling, befuddling, perplexing, baffling, bewildering. Just to be sure I want to put this in context. This man sat for an hour in the study of scripture with 10 other people having written a manifesto about the inferiority and inhumanity of what he called "niggers" and proceeded to gun down nine innocent lives, telling the tenth woman "I'm going to let you go so you can tell people about what happened here." What he did to amounts to not only terrorism, but also the theft of the most valuable thing each of those nine families possessed; the life and existence of a loved one. Gone. Pilfered. Plundered. Never to be had again for as long as time and space exist. Let that sink in. Now think about what your response would be. What should your response to this be? Here were some of theirs. "I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you" "Have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people but God forgives you, and I forgive you." "As we said in the Bible study, we enjoyed you. But may God have mercy on you." I forgive you God forgives you May God have mercy on you We enjoyed you This makes no sense unless you begin to think about the dynamics of race in America. You see, one manifestation of white supremacy is the forbidding of black rage and the insistence that black people be held to a higher moral standard. Instead of addressing this man as a hell-bent terrorist who methodically planned and executed a mission to purge the earth of what he thought were inhumane and inferior beings that were raping his women and taking over the country, he was treated as an innocent soul who had somehow made a mistake. The sad thing is that this is what has become expected of black people. It is why we (as an American conscious) accept MLK and vilify Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. Martin Luther King reacted in a passive, non-resistant, non-threatening to oppressive violence. It is obvious to see why this would be welcomed by the mainstream. When Malcolm X and the BPP reacted with resistance to violence, (actually the norm for most American systems), they were treated as threats, radicals, militants, extremists, and agitators. In actuality passive resistance is only expected of black people. President Obama tweeted about the calls for forgiveness, "In the midst of the darkest tragedy, the decency and goodness of the American people shines through these families." In reality, this reaction to terrorism is about as un-American as it gets. We didn't react passively to Pearl Harbor, Lusitania, 911, the Boston bombings, Benghazi, the list goes on. When Americans are attacked by people with political motives we move swiftly to defend ourselves and eliminate the threat. As we should, "self-preservation is the first natural law" as Malcolm would say. However we as black people have been programmed to accept and pardon white violence when it is directed towards us. Its why they label those who display violence towards police as "thugs" for example. This amounts to a neutralizing agent that makes it impossible for black people to feel or react with anger towards white brutalization. We must realize this. This is not to discredit the solace that these families may feel that forgiveness brings to them. However we as a people need to be doing what any sensible nation would be doing and that is asking critical questions. What can we do to protect ourselves against what is inevitably the next act of hate? How are we preparing to protect the next batch of innocent lives targeted for theft? How will we make ourselves safer? Until we answer those questions, God have mercy on us. -515
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What is it about us that compels people to bomb and shoot up our churches? Slam our head into concretes, lynch us, gun us down in the streets, publicly humiliate us, target our bodies for incarceration?
Is it us America? Or should I say AmeriKKKa? Or is it something so deep, dark, and ugly inside of you you'd rather play mind games and lie to yourself, tell yourself that this cancer is not really there? Call the murderer "mentally ill", "clean shaven", a "quiet and polite" schoolboy anything EXCEPT a racist hell-bent terrorist in your media. Try to claim that this Clay Aiken look-alike is actually "light skinned black or mixed of some sort" on twitter? Have your politicians convince you that this is not about anti-blackness, that its about religious freedom, or gun control. Are you really that afraid to confront your own racism? Can somebody travel from out of town to the most historically prominent black church in the country, say the words "you're raping our women and taking over the country and you've got to go", and gun down nine innocent black lives in a way that isn't racist? And what do you want us to do? Protest? Sing in the streets? Send another eloquent negro leader to speak articulately about your hidden evils so that you can sick the FBI on him, have him assassinated, and white wash his legacy? How do we protect ourselves? White supremacy is everywhere. School, prison, the courthouse, the workplace, the kitchen, the tv, and now in our own churches. What can we do except either shoot back or hope that we aren't next? Do you really expect us not to retalliate this time? How can it not be personal? We can't go to pool parties, wear hoodies, eat skittles, walk in the street, sit in our own homes, and now pray without thinking that there was another black person doing the same thing and it got them brutalized or killed. You think we really going to sit around peacefully and wait for our demise like good little Negroes? Do you think that we forgot when Malcolm said by any means necessary? Or are you going to listen this time when we tell you #BlackLivesMatter ?? But the question we all want answered is; am I next? As a kid, my whole world was black. My wonderfully fierce mother is black, my stunningly graceful sisters are black, my determined step-father who raised me - took me fishing, taught me how to shoot a basketball, talked with me about what manhood meant - is black. My heroes, whether they be Sammy Sosa, Michael Jordan, Martin Luther King Jr, Thurgood Marshall, or Malcolm X, were all black. I understood at a very young age that even the way we talked, the music we listened too, the food we ate, was black. To me whiteness was something in a fairy tale book (literally all the fairy tale characters in my books were white), a movie, or on the news. It was alien to me. Something far, distant, and (at that time) mysterious. You see, even my grandmother, (who technically was white) identified with black people. She was a social outcast from a rural town, which might be why she felt at home in black communities. Or maybe it was her self proclaimed love of black beauty and culture. She had children with a few different men, my mother's father was black, (though I have never met him), and the rest of my mom's 6 siblings are a kaleidoscope of different browns and tans. I have always struggled with my identity because I am part white. I am not sure "how much" white I have in my ancestry, I just know its there and you can tell its there. The problem is I don't feel white. I don't want to be white. I am NOT white. Yet throughout my life I have found that society has an obsession of ripping me from embracing blackness wholly and fully, instead telling me that I should learn to intersect my blackness with nuance; embrace the "white" part of me. I have one physical trait that gets complimented more than anything else: my eyes. I was born with blue eyes, and while they have started to migrate into a color resembling hazel, they still are greenish-gray, with specks of light brown and greenish blue sprinkled around the edges. They are not the deep rich ebony brown that my sisters, mother, and father possessed. I was taught to love my eyes all my life, after all they were an exciting contrast to the "boring" brown that everybody I knew possessed. I still get told "my what beautiful eyes you have" by people. What they are really telling me is "the white part of you is beautiful." I notice this with black people too. I've been told they are jealous of my eyes, that I was lucky to have such gorgeous eyes, that I should be thankful. This is not the only way in which people praise the whiteness I carry. There are other white things that people congratulate me on. My love for academia, my extensive vocabulary, how articulate I am, how "well-rounded" I am (I seriously get that a lot), how polite I am... These are things that brought me ridicule by my fellow black pupils has a kid. I used to have red hair, so they'd call me carrot top. They'd call me professor because of the white way I spoke, they'd call me confused, nicknamed me question mark, ask me if I enjoyed looking at the world through white boy eyes, call me the nerd, the ass kisser, uncle Tom... I felt that my proximity to whiteness threatened them. I still believe that my proximity to whiteness threatens myself. You see blackness to me is my source of pride. It is beauty. Black is my family, my friends, the people who I love. Black is the music I listen to, the food I eat, the vernacular I speak, the dances I dance. It is central to my identity and my life. So of course my whiteness is a threat to me. It is something I wish I did not have. I wish that I never had to prove to others, and myself, that I was indeed black. This is why it hurts when even today in college I still get remarks like "Shut up nigga you only half [black]" As if only half of my beautiful family were black, as if the music I listen to is anything but the real authentic black art it is, as if I had spent only half of my life navigating through anti-black racism at every step and the other half of my life as an accepted privileged member of white America. This is why I cling onto my hair. My hair is unmistakably black. When grown out it looks as if somebody had accidentally placed a matted nest of the coarsest kind of hair reserved for those with dark chocolaty skin on top of the head of this boy who is obviously lacking in melanin. I love it. When I look in the mirror I see Huey, and Angela, and QuestLove. I see the hair my beautiful mother once wore as a badge of racial pride. I feel strength coursing through each nappy strand as I run my fingers through it. I can channel the stream of consciousness that can only come from embracing your roots. There's something spiritual about growing out my hair. I love that I have to go to black hair stores and buy pink hair lotion (or as I call it, hair crack). I love that I have to use an obnoxiously large metal pick. I love that when I wake up in the morning I find that it has assumed the shape of my pillow. I love it because it is black, it connects me with blackness, and nobody can take it from me unless I say so. It is the only part of my identity which I have never felt was under fire or in danger of being questioned. When times are hard, I need that security. With all of the anxiety young black people are experiencing today, with the #BlackLivesMatter movement in full swing, and with my stream of consciousness flowing more robustly than ever, I'll be damned if I cut my hair. -515 P.S. I'm leaving a slideshow of my favorite afros. Enjoy :) Of course Caitlyn would be met with Transphobia. Insistence on calling her "Bruce", "He", "Him", I even heard Caitlyn called "it" a few times. Cries of "What's the hell is going on?!" could be heard on major cable news programs. Others made condescending comments about the relevance of this historical event, as if it shouldn't be a polarizing cultural moment that will go down as one of the defining events of the millennial era. These instances of bigotry were inevitable. Whether it was Cassius becoming Muhammad, Michael Sam coming out as a proud member of the Gay community, or the emergence of Caitlyn, social and cultural pioneers are rarely invited into equality by the mainstream.
However there was a barrage of equally, yet much more subtly, insulting comments about Caitlyn that for the most part went un-condemned. While we were ready to correct the Transphobia towards Caitlyn, I saw virtually no mention of the Misogyny and Sexism that occurred in the covering and discussion of Caitlyn's transformation (and I'm sorry if any language in this is insensitive; please call me out on it.) In a way, this treatment in the media and public discourse is a sign that she is being accepted and seen as a woman. That doesn't make it okay. Now, or anytime. What we forgot to mention was that while the man formerly known as Bruce Jenner was described as an American Olympian, a great athlete, a hero, a visionary, successful, and affluent, Caitlyn was for the most part described as beautiful and sexy. Not that this is untrue, but it shows that too often men are measured by their talent, intelligence, effectiveness, strength, achievement, and success, while women are judged as objects for visual and sexual pleasure. Caitlyn was no exception. It wasn't just the adjectives used to describe her. I saw newscasters compare her to other female stars, say things like "she looks amazing especially at her age", I heard people analyze her make up, slut shame the outfits she chose to wear, question whether some of the wrinkles in her skin were photo-shopped off, comment on the impressiveness of her boobs (compliments of TMZ), HER LOOKS/BODY WERE EVEN COMPARED TO HER DAUGHTERS AND FORMER WIFE, etc, etc. What was disappointing was that this type of Objectification of women in American media was so normal to me that had the subject not been Caitlyn (or possibly the FLOTUS) I would have never really been alarmed by these comments. I'd like to make it clear that there were members of the media that praised her courage and strength (although I do suspect that some of them did it not because of their true appreciation for the courage she showed but rather to capitalize on what is undeniably one of the hallmark cultural moments of the millennial era). Of course she was met with Transphobia; we knew Transphobia was rampant in America after the initial announcement was made. Unfortunately the more normalized sexist and misogynistic objectification of Caitlyn Jenner means that America has already started to welcome her to, and remind others of, the ugly reality of what it means to be a Woman in America. -515 |
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October 2018
Matt BruceViva DSM!! |