There is so much going on in our country right now, where does a girl start? From the Jena 6 controversy to whether or not Barack is black enough, to the noose found outside a black professor's office door at Columbia University, it seems there is no stopping the insanity. Our trusty president is still doing what he does best (nothing) and Donovan McNabb is telling it like it is to, mostly, deaf ears. More often than not the news sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher to me, “Wah wah wah wah.” I’m so over it all.
As a black woman in America raising black babies it agitates me to the point of increased blood pressure when racism is thrown in my face. I’m wise enough to know that racism is alive and well and will remain so as long as people pretend it is dead. Just because there isn’t a cross burning in my front yard, doesn’t mean there aren’t racists in my neighborhood. Just because no one has called my daughter “n*gger” at school doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. It’s a reality and I’m ready to deal with it when confronted but that sick feeling it imposes still lingers.
Some white people “get it” or at least make the effort to see what blacks are talking about. Others prefer to live in the closet pretending we’re all one big happy melting pot. Just wait til Patty brings home Tyrone. But whether white people get it or not is irrelevant, if someone hurts do you ignore them because you can’t feel their pain? Maybe their injury isn’t an open wound, maybe they have a headache…you can’t see that pain but if they say it’s there you see fit to tell them they are “whining” and to get over it? I surely hope not.
Many of the issues in our news right now boil down to racism. Nothing more, nothing less. I just wish people could see that I hurt when my child hurts, my husband and I want all there is on this earth that is good for our babies and we try to treat people the way we want to be treated. How different is a black person from a white person? We each love, hurt, cry, laugh, sing and in the end, we die. Maybe one day we’ll all be so racially mixed up that no one will know the difference...maybe one day a Jena 6 will be so long gone from existence that having to debate racism, like dinosaurs, will be extinct.
1 comment:
You have some great thoughts on the racism problem and I think you are right on.
My husband and I are so tired of the racism in the world that we decided we wanted to do something to promote anti-racism so we came up with a Human Rights design that we are selling on items at www.oneracehuman.info. We are looking for a peace or anti-racism organization to help promote the site in which case we would donate a portion of the sales to that organization. If you are interested, please contact me at cooli02@jamaicans.com. We all need to do our part to help stop racism which is causing the majority of problems in the world.
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