Sitting at my computer the other day and came across this
video on YouTube, where a bunch of white Americans where asked how often, if
ever, did they think about being white.
I thought it was a stupid question, until I begin to hear the answers:
Never, not unless I am ask, if I am around a few Black people, Maybe twice in
my life, etc. I was stunned, how did
they not think about being white, I think about being black almost every day. Every black person I know, think about being
black, at least once a week, if not once a day.
It completely caught my wife and I by storm, she was playing on her PlayStation
and interrupted by, the response of these questions. This older white woman, about late 40’s, was
amused at how her and her husband, at age 20 something, walked into a bank,
both without jobs and got approved for a bank loan for $104,000.00. She could not believe they would give it to
them, let alone so much. Of course, they
had plans and everything but, let a black couple go in the bank and ask for
anything without a job or three jobs. It
obviously did not hit me or affect me until now, it was earlier, we did not
watch the whole movie, and it was not that great, quality or anything however,
the words sat in my mind, timelessly. My
non-profit organization has a campaign on Funrazr.com to raise funds for Back
Packs for needed children, to return to school prepared for success. Growing up it was hard for me to maintain
school work, because I went without a lot of supplies and so do, so many others
growing up today in poverty and TWF is putting together 27 fully stock Back Packs
for 27 children. The campaign begins,
almost one month ago and there has only been one contributor. Two weeks into the campaign, Prince the
entertainer passed and a woman placed a crowdfound account online to raise
funds, to attend his funeral. She had
already raised over $1,000.00. The same people,
who donated to her campaign, totally ignore the needs of children in our
country. She does not need the money to
pay for someone’s funeral because she does not have it; no, she just needs the
money to go to a funeral because she loved him more than life itself. Of course, something is wrong with Americans,
of course something is wrong with the foundation of our country.
When my friends and family, tried to tell me that this person,
was just not that into me, I did not hear them.
I chased him for almost eight years, to the point where – to strangers,
he was my boyfriend and we were on the verge of getting married. I was about two shades away from the girl on
the movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You” the main character who stalked the guy
at the bar; totally me, except we were in High School and not attending
bars. His cousin, who was a friend of
mine, for years, would get me to talk to other boys. My bff in high school, damn near pushed me
into the arms of numerous other boys, to stop me from stressing over this one. Everyone could see that he was clearly using
me for sex and did not want anything to do with me publicly but I was in
love. I could not see ‘the calm before
the storm’; I could not see, even though, it was going into five years and we
only spoke on the phone maybe four times. He passed away in 2007 and I did not admit I
was in that relationship, alone for the entire time, until 2014. Once they seen I did not listen to their
advice about the situation, they stopped advising. When I talked about him, they talked about
somebody else; I brought up our issues, they brought up issues regarding something
else. It was a process but, why, why
could my conscious mind not understand what my unconscious mind and everyone
else knew, about the situation. Was I that
traumatized that I blocked out the parts of my brain that was required to
understand the manipulation of him and the addiction to him? It is the same part of my brain, which, cried
out when I had to accept the truth of Thanksgiving and Christopher Columbus not
discovering America, the part of my brain, which, did not switch on when the
incident of September 11, 2001 occurred.
The part of my brain that is not willing to accept the trauma, of our
United States Government murdering our United States President.
Each year in school, we learn how to represent resources. We learn to present, when we gather
information from other people, we are required to quote the information and
cite it; we learn to verify our sources, and verify those sources against other
sources. When I conduct research on
something, I never get all of my information from one source, and I have
learned to take information at face value and look words up if, they do not
appear to be use in the correct context.
I have seen thousands of videos about September 11, 2001. I have read many news articles, books and
spoke with people, some in detail about this topic; to them the most important
issue is finding the information for yourself.
Specifically we learn to fact check, bibliography, work sites,
quotation, and plagiarism – drummed in just as racism. Yet, there are millions of American’s and
some citizens in other countries whom do not believe these acts, acts of
treason, could be taken out by the government – they all say the same thing,
why, why would they do it? The reason,
to them, of course is even worse than the accusation. I could not fathom, Bill Clinton, having
extra marital affairs with a woman in the white house. Let alone, his wife being ok with it and
still not divorcing him. Then, I could
not believe George W. Bush would be able to steal the presidency and get away
with it. As I got older, the more my
mind could absorb, the more the government was throwing at us. After we embark on a War that would kill off
majority of the driven individuals in this generation and the nation begin to
open their eyes to police brutality, they made a Black man president. Then they had to reintroduce slavery and Jim
Crow to our children so, they made, The Butler and an accidental slave, their
Hero.
If you, see racism in your world and you wake up every day
and you do not think about, being (insert your race here), do you agree that,
that action or lack of action, is a part of the system of racism? If you, see racism in your world and you wake
up every day and you think about being (insert your race here), do you agree
that, that action or lack of action, is a part of the system of racism? When you fill out applications or apply to
get your license, you tell the worker you are a (insert your race here). Proudly you love being (insert your race
here), you cannot be blamed for loving the (insert your race here). When you, teach your children about racism,
what do you say – how do you explain the situations that occurred in our
history? We have not had that talk with
our son however, he has seen The Butler, and he knows what being black is in
America, he cried for Trayvon Martin and we could not be more certain that he
will surely not do cocaine in America, thanks to CNN. How do you explain the murder of Sandra Bland
to your children? How did you explain,
Freddie Gray to your children, when they came home from school that
afternoon? How is a mother, doing her
job, beating her kid’s ass for participating in riots, NEWS? How is that a headline story, if you listen
to her, she says, I just did what I would usually do. Teaching your children right from wrong and
expecting nothing less – is how black children raised. We learned from our parents and our parents,
parents. Be respectful to elders, knowing
your place, in any arena, not showing out in public, all those things they
taught us because, they had to protect themselves from racism. If they were ghetto or loud, or named their
children LaQuesha, they would be displaced in society and their children would
not have opportunities. We have to do
everything twice as hard because, our first impression with anyone is a lazy Negro,
looking for handouts and expecting the world at their feet or they will take
it.
The best part of racism is that it is in layers and it can
change. The biggest thing about this
racism we have here is we are all under the impression that it is only towards
minorities. When I wrote the sentence
above, Microsoft required me to capitalize Negro. When I mentioned black or white people above,
and now, it does not make me correct black or white. Microsoft requires capitalization, for proper
nouns, nouns, and person’s names. It
requires me to capitalize Jewish, Italian, Spanish, French etc. When did all people born in America since the
late or mid-twenties, become white or black.
White’s did not exist, until Jim Crow or round about, when Negro’s became
citizens. White people usually
recognized as their actual race, Irish Americans, Jewish American etc., what
happened? We all became labels created
by our government, white people, and black people – codes and or numbers in a
system of others numbers.
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