Black History Day

blackhistoryday:

When comedian Michael Che chose to no longer engage with Leah McSweeney after connecting on a dating app, McSweeney responded with a podcast where she bashed Che, calling him a woman hater, “arrogant and so rude and disrespectful…” Michael Che produced the actual text conversations, exposing McSweeney in her lies. She tried to defend herself in the “chetuation”, by saying, amongst other things, “I’m not making excuses at all but he had this very condescending tone when he did the rejection part and that like…got me like…stirred me up inside.” False accusations made against black men and boys by white women are not a phenomenon that started with McSweeney. Just this past week we read about Carolyn Bryant, the white woman whose accusations led to 14-year-old Emmett Till’s gruesome murder in 1955, recanting her initial story that Till made verbal and sexual advances that left her “scared to death.” While Che’s interaction with Leah only led to temporary slander (thank Big Brotha Gawd Almighty that he didn’t delete that thread), it did remind us of the dangerous history of white women who have chosen to lie about their encounters with black men, and the overall belief that the black man is a threat to the fragile white woman.

 The white race has always considered itself to be the superior race in all aspects of life. As Thomas Jefferson says in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.” The white woman in america has always been placed on a pedestal with her long hair and her white skin. She is seen as pure and angelic; a person who can do no wrong. A quote from Phyllis Palmer in Mamta Accapadi’s piece “When White Women Cry: How White Women’s Tears Oppress Women of Color,” says, “the problem for white women is that their privilege is based on accepting the image of goodness, which is powerlessness.” Accapadi then breaks it down, “This powerlessness informs the nature of white womanhood. Put in simple terms, male privilege positions the nature of womanhood, while white privilege through history positions a white woman’s reality as the universal norm of womanhood…” The need for the white race to love the white woman and to protect her at all costs has caused the black man to be seen as a threat to her purity. As Maya Angelou says, “As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, black men desired them and black women worked for them.”

 Historically, black men have been stereotyped as hypersexualized savage brutes that only want to rape and fetishize white women. This thought helped white women who were caught with their black male slaves. It also helped Victoria Price and Ruby Bates falsely accuse Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozie Powell, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, Roy Wright and Haywood Patterson, 9 young black men (who would eventually be called the Scottsboro Boys) of rape after a brawl led to the discovery of them on a freight with all men, which could have possibly led to, “moral charges.” The fear of black men hurting white women led Charles Stuart to describe a “dark-skinned mugger” in a “dangerous part of town” as the person who killed his wife. It would be discovered that it was actually Stuart himself who killed her. The understanding that law enforcement will always take a white woman at her word when accusing a black man threw the scent off of Bonnie Sweeten, who told authorities that two black men in a Cadillac kidnapped her and her daughter when she had in fact stolen money from family and her job and taken her kid to Disney. It’s the reason why 19-year-old Darryl Hunt was convicted without evidence of the rape and murder of a white women. Even after DNA proved he didn’t commit the crime, he was still imprisoned for 9 more years.

 The thought that Obama’s presidency led to a post-racial america would lead some to believe that incidents like those mentioned above are a thing of the past; yet, just in 2015, american terrorist Dylan Roof cited the need to protect the pure white woman as a reason for his decision to murder 9 members of Mother Emanuel AME stating, “you rape our women and you’re taking over our country.” In February of last year, 5 teenagers in Brooklyn were accused of raping a white woman at gunpoint. After sending police on a hunt to find the boys she eventually recanted her story, and it was discovered that she was actually having sex in the park with her own father. In November, Leiha Ann-Sue Artman accused four black men of kidnapping, raping, and holding her hostage for ransom. After more questioning, it was discovered that she made the whole story up, and she got a year in jail for it –significantly less time than the men they would have charged for the crime had it gone further. The belief that black men should always be eager and honored to sexualize, fetishize and be in the presence of white womanhood came through with a chance encounter between Lena Dunham and Odell Beckham in which she assumed, “The vibe was very much like, ‘Do I want to [f—k] it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone.’ It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, ‘This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.’” Even our 44^th President could not get away from this narrative when Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said that she, “felt a little bit threatened, if you will, in the attitude that he had,” after he had the audacity to start walking away from her mid sentence.

 As Dr. Nsenga K. Burton wrote, “Law-enforcement agencies pull out all the stops when a white woman says a black man or woman has committed a crime against her, even when the white woman is the actual predator. The behavior of the white woman and law enforcement plays to the worst aspects of our society: the idea that black men in particular and blacks in general are violent and obsessed with white women to such an extent that white women need to be protected from blacks at all costs.”  In season 1 of The Boondocks, when Sarah jokingly says to Tom, “ I told you about messing with those white girls,” the implications of these words go deeper than our laughter. Michael Che and Odell Beckham survived the false accusations with just slanderous conversations; however, false accusations led Emmett Till to his death, and have landed many black men in prison. Black mothers have had to have conversations with their sons about the possible dangers of interactions with white women, and while we always like to have hope that these situations will somehow disappear, we have to remain in a reality driven state of mind. It’s the only way we will survive.

blackhistoryday:

At this point I’m certain that everyone has seen the new season of Orange is the New Black. If you haven’t…then consider this somewhat of a spoiler. * I wouldn’t consider it a spoiler…but I’m sure someone somewhere would and promptly have a fit in my inbox*

Anyhoo…

If you’re a fan of OITNB then I’m sure you can remember the horror you felt watching Poussey being crushed to death towards the end of last season. I won’t even lie…I cried over a fictional character’s death…I have no shame about it. Watching this season, I actually thought more time would be dedicated to Poussey as Taystee continued to #sayhername in efforts to bring about justice and accountability. Finally, after 12 episodes, and a severe loss of hope, the writers brought in James P. Washington, Poussey’s daddy. When CO Bayley popped up at his door he spoke words that left me shooketh: “I’m not interested in giving you whatever it is you think you need so you can atone…May you never have a day’s peace. Never.” I hollered, literally.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I find it so interesting that the first thing expected to come from the mouth of a black person or persons who lost a loved one to police brutality, white vigilantes, and/or white supremacy is forgiveness. When I told my mom what I wanted to talk about for this piece, she quickly reminded me that as Christians, we have to forgive in order to go to heaven. While that is completely understandable, it is also important to remember that grief is a process, and in situations like this, we are only ever allowed to see two phases: sadness and then (seemingly) instantly, forgiveness. Merely days after Samuel DuBose was murdered by Ray Tensing, at a press conference, Audrey DuBose, his mother, was asked if she was able to forgive Tensing; to which she replied, “I can forgive him…God forgives us.” As the trial of Dylan Roof progressed, family members of the victims of Roof’s white supremacy driven massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME continuously took to the podium to inform Roof that they forgave him.

Make no mistakes about it, fictitious James Washington is not the only victim that has ever gone against the traditional “all is forgiven” narrative. When asked if she would forgive Daniel Pantaleo, the officer caught on video choking Eric Garner to death, Esaw Garner, his widow, responded by saying, “Hell no.” She then went on to say, “The time for remorse would have been when my husband was yelling to breathe. No, I don’t accept his apology. No, I could care less about his condolences. He’s still working. He’s still getting a paycheck. He’s still feeding his kids, when my husband is six feet under and I’m looking for a way to feed my kids now.” The news reports would accuse her of “lashing out.” Lezley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, stepped away from the narrative, when in an interview with Al Jazeera, made it known that she would never forgive Darren Wilson, the officer who murdered her son. Rekia Boyd’s mother, Angela Helton, also expressed that she would never forgive off-duty officer Dante Servin for the unjustified murder of her child.  

As I said earlier, for those who are of the Christian faith, the Bible does teach us that we must let go of our anger and forgive those that wrong us (see Ephesians 4:31-32); however, the Bible doesn’t tell us that we are not allowed to be angry at all. By shutting out the anger from these families, the media only continues to display the false narrative of the docile negro; who forgives the white person who snatched a life from them. This narrative creates the evidence necessary to go against the “angry protester” in these times. The idea is that if the families’ of victims show forgiveness, and make a call for peace; then those who choose to disregard and protest are now problematic; after all, to forgive means to remove all feelings of animosity and anger. When we continuously watch Black people have to publicly express their forgiveness, it almost takes away our right to be angry on their behalf. We can instead only empathize with the heartbreak that is associated with the loss of a loved one. How can you be angry on behalf of someone who has forgiven?

Again, James Washington did not set about a movement for rejecting the notion of forgiveness; he’s not even real. His words only served as a reminder that it is possible and justifiable not to give the satisfaction of forgiveness. If we’re created in the image of Christ as we’ve been taught, then I’m sure he would understand if someone needed a little more time outside of a press conference to forgive. He created us, and all that is within. Anger included; after all, Jesus got angry and flipped the tables in the temple.

Negroes. Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day They change their minds… - Langston Hughes

blackhistoryday:

Every year around Martin Luther King Jr. Day everyone likes to drop an inspirational quote from Dr. King. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a multifaceted philosopher and an amazing orator with a plethora of accessible speeches, sermons and books; yet, somewhere along the way it seems as if a rule was created, restricting white people to one quote in particular:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

I don’t know the reason behind the restriction; perhaps because this is one of the better quotes to try to push the “I don’t see color; we’re one race – the human race” agenda. Or perhaps the darkness and the light can be used to represent black and white and thus play into the white savior movement. Whatever the reason may be! BlackHistoryDay.tumblr.com is here today to give you 50 quotes from Dr. King that I encourage you to keep in mind for your future references:

1. “No movement of essentially revolutionary quality can be neat and tidy.”

2. “The only answer that one can give to those who would question the readiness of the Negro for integration is that the standards of the Negro lag behind at times not because of an inherent inferiority, but because of the fact that segregation and discrimination do exist.” 

3. “There is no more torturous logic than to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation.”

4. “It is one of the ironies of history that in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal, we’re still arguing over whether the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character.”

5. “There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.”

6. “There are some things that we’ve got to learn to sacrifice for. And we’ve got to come to the point that we are determined not to accept a lot of things that we have been accepting in the past.” 

7. “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality…”

8. “We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.”

9. “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?” 

10. “Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.”

11. “If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

12. “That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that he’s superior because his skin is white—and can’t hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.” 

13. “Through our scientific and technological developments we have lifted our heads to the skies, and yet our feet are still firmly planted in the muck of barbarism and racial hatred. Indeed this is America’s chief moral dilemma.”

14. “To keep a group of people confined to nasty slums and dirty hovels is not a State Right, but a State Wrong.”

15. “It may be true that morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.”

16. “It may be true that laws and federal action cannot change bad internal attitudes, but they can control the external effects of those internal attitudes.”

17. “The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.”

18. “Even this nation came into being with a massive act of law breaking; for what implied more civil disobedience than the Boston tea party…there’s nothing new about law breaking.”

19. “God has brought us here for this hour to tell us to save America because our white brothers is carrying it more and more to destruction and damnation.”

20. “We’re called to do it so that means we can’t stop. This should make us more determined than ever before.”

21. “Now they always tell us to cool off and I know that when you get people cooling off too much they will end up in a deep freeze. They tell us to slow up and some of them even say that the Negros in Albany out to go home and be quiet because there’s a political campaign going on and you may help elect some particular candidate that shouldn’t be in office. Well I don’t know if you have an answer for them and I don‘t know if I have an absolute answer but I want to say to those who are telling us to stop merely because a political campaign is going on that this is a moral issue for us. We’re moving on towards freedom’s land. We cannot stop our legitimate aspirations for freedom merely because some immoral person will use this for his own political aggrandizements…”

22. “We worked in this very nation 2 centuries without wages. We made cotton king; we built our homes and the homes of our masters in the midst of injustice and exploitation. Yet out of a bottomless vitality we continue to grow and to live and if the inexpressible cruelties of slavery didn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face cannot stop us.”

23. “The absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice.”

24. “As the nation passes from opposing extremist behavior to the deeper and more pervasive elements of equality, white america reaffirms its bonds to the status quo.”

25. “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance.”

26. “It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

27. “To find the origins of the Negro problem we must turn to the white man’s problem.”

28. “It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some rationalization to clothe their acts in the garments of righteousness.”

29. “The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro.”

30. “Just as the ambivalence of white Americans grows out of their oppressor status, the predicament of Negro Americans grows out of their oppressed status.”

31. “Negroes have grown accustomed now to hearing unfeeling and insensitive whites say: ‘other immigrant groups such as the Irish, the Jews and the Italians started out with similar handicaps, and yet they made it. Why haven’t the Negroes done the same?’ These questioners refuse to see that the situation of other immigrant groups a hundred years ago and the situation of the Negro today cannot be usefully compared.”

32. “The Negro was crushed, battered and brutalized, but he never gave up. He proves again that life is stronger than death.”

33. “A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. It is the desperate, suicidal cry of one who is so fed up with the powerlessness of his cave existence that he asserts that he would rather be dead than ignored.”

34. “What is needed today on the part of white America is a committed altruism which recognizes this truth.”

35. “True altruism is more than the capacity to pity; it is the capacity to empathize. Pity is feeling sorry for someone; empathy is feeling sorry with someone. Empathy is fellow feeling for the person in need— his pain, agony and burdens.” 

36. “I can never be who I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made.”

37. “True education helps us on the one hand to know truth, but more than that it helps us to love truth and sacrifice for it. It gives us not only knowledge, which is power, but wisdom, which is control.”

38. “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”

39. “We will move out of these mountains that have so often impeded our progress, the mountain of moral and ethical relativism, the mountain of practical materialism, the mountain of corroding hatred, bitterness and violence, and the mountain of racial segregation.”

40. “…Always have faith in the possibility of getting over to the Promised Land. Don’t become a pessimist and feel that we cannot get there; it is difficult sometimes, it is hard sometimes, but always have faith that the Promised Land can be achieved and that we can possess this land of brotherhood and peace and understanding.”

41. “An individual who is not concerned about his selfhood and his freedom is at that moment committing moral and spiritual suicide…”

42. “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

43. “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.”

44. “Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion.”

45. “Many sincere white people in the south privately oppose segregation and discrimination, but they are apprehensive lest they be publicly condemned.”

46. “’Do not conform’ is difficult advice in a generation when crowd pressures have unconsciously conditioned our minds and feet to move to the rhythmic drum beat of the status quo.”

47. “This tragic attempt to give moral sanction to an economically profitable system gave birth to the doctrine of white supremacy.”

48. “Unlike physical blindness that is usually inflicted upon individuals as a result of natural forces beyond their control, intellectual and moral blindness is a dilemma which man inflicts upon himself by his tragic misuse of freedom and his failure to use his mind to its fullest capacity.”

49. “Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.”

50. “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Enjoy.

(via battleteacake)