So, I've been unemployed for a while now and trying to find my way. Along with my unemployment came feelings of being unaccomplished and frustration. I felt like I was 18 all over again. Thoughts of going to the military to gain some skills and make myself more marketable. Thoughts of going to college again. Feeling like I wasted years of my life in education now that I'm going in a different direction.
My mother reunited with an old friend and bragged about his connections/network. He had me call some people for what I assumed to be guidance and support. I spoke with two of them. One was a younger guy around my age that was very encouraging. The other seems to be older and possibly more accomplished. The older one had a no nonsense approached and ended up advising me, "cut the hair, cut the crap."
Maybe I was foolish enough to believe that the world wasn't so caught up in being clean cut. I guess I saw that episode of Living Single when Kyle refused to cut his hair and made the mistake of thinking that was based on reality. My conversations through email got more intense with this older guy and eventually ended up in me exploding and telling him what I thought about him. To me he was another example of a black man that excels and instead of helping uplift others kicks them while they're down. Luckily I had the privilege of communicating with this guy.
I remember writing a poem called ex-girlfriend. The last line of the poem was the deepest to me. It said, "A young black man trying to survive in this world, who woulda thought that his poison would be a young black girl."
I know that I'm still young, but reflecting on that line now, I can see how young I truly was when I wrote that statement. I had heard the stories about black people being like crabs in the barrel, pulling each other down. The more I experience life, the more I am revealed to the truth in that story. As militant and pro black as I feel inside, it goes against all of the logic that I should have obtained from my experiences. Black people have always been more detrimental to me in life and yet I constantly speak of racism and bias from white people. Is there something wrong with me?
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Maybe i'm missing part of the story. It sounds like he was trying to tell you how to succeed according to his definition of success, not kick you down...As far as Black people being oppressive to other Black people, one of the marks of oppression is the oppressed imitating their oppressor. kid gets abused at home and becomes the bully at school, child gets molested and grows up to become a molester. You can't judge Black people without putting it in the context of our oppression. One of the worst things of course, is how we have been conditioned to accept European standards of beauty.
ReplyDeleteI did leave out part of our correspondence. He also insulted my intelligence through name calling & claimed that I did not have a desire to succeed. Maybe that was his way of encouraging me to be what he felt was successful, but then how do we define kicking someone down?
ReplyDeleteWhen a kid is molested and grows up to be a molester, his/her behavior is not excused as a result of his/her childhood. A child that is molested is not condemned to be a molester. I judge individuals based on individual actions. Therefore, I judged that individual as a result of his actions which I see as the actions of someone who want to hinder my success.
So, I need to be more understanding of the lack of support I receive within the black community because we are oppressed as a people? Does that mean that any attempt to unite with the oppressed is futile because they strive to be like their oppressors?
No, I think it is the opposite. When someone attributes negative behavior to our people without putting it in the context of our oppression; of course we are going to look like violent, sociopathic criminals without any hope of redemption. But, when put in the proper context we realize this behavior is not natural or intrinsic to us and this gives us hope because if there is a cause to this behavior we can reverse the cause and reverse the behavior.
ReplyDeleteIt is a struggle for our people to unify and we do attack each other. But, it is not futile for us to struggle for African unity because these are effects not causes. A clear cause to me being self-hate. So the struggle for unity is also the struggle to transform self-hate to self-love. Transform ignorance of our history into pride in African history.
So, if we only judge individual actions, without looking at things in a holistic way, we can end up attacking symptoms rather than the roots of deeper problems, we can end up blaming the victims and allowing the actual problems off the hook. There are 2 sides to every story and if you look at things in a one-sided way, you'll come up with answers that don't answers, conclusions that don't conclude and explanations that don't explain as Fred Hampton use to say