My Experience with Race Pt. 3
I am writing this note because I understand it to be a very complex subject but I have done some serious thinking on it for the past 4-5 years and I think I have been able to have this make sense to me. I would be interested in what others think especially since everyone’s racial make up is so different and backgrounds can be very complex as well. I will separate it as 3 parts: High School, College, and Post College; covering a span of roughly 11 years of my experience.
Part Three: Post College (Real Life)
I realized that race is almost just a socio-economic political game and that statistically nothing has changed significantly since slavery. Most the “progress” that was made at different times have just been reversed or countered by a larger regress, any moment of progress in this country is followed by a strong backlash and removal of progress. Is it because once progress is made or being made the leaders are assassinated or removed from being able to continue the progress or the people begin to trust the system will correct its mistakes because we have made “progress”, but it does in a very different way. I don’t see it as much as progress but as new methods of maintaining the status quo, it is classic colonialism and imperialism, especially when you have people of the oppressed groups becoming enforcers of the oppression and defenders of the status quo. And that happens when you let a few “special” (“Toms” so to speak) make it and train them to be thankful for allowing them to use their “skills” to be something in this world.
After the upsurge in the 60s, with all its flaws, this country was approaching a breaking point so mass assassinations, genocide, and incarcerations were carried out, and even the “progressive” new deal era received a backlash and the Regan era began (in the 1980s) and things just continued to explicitly go down hill from there, and the problems have become illicit in a way that they are “out of sight and out of mind” instead of in perfect view as they were in previous generations. Colonialism almost perfected, in a way, that lets enough people make it to a top, not to be confused with the top, and then are made to believe that anyone can do it if they just work hard for progress like them and those before them who made their success possible. It is colonialism but done within their own land with people they brought from other lands hence the term inter-colonialism (Prof. Wolfenstien).
Things have gotten complex because we have made them so. There is more of a race/class presence as some African Americans have been given access to positions that non-whites have traditionally been shut out from, since traditionally the most bottom of the barrel people in America seem to have been African Americans who culturally have been associated as “black” but as people gain social mobility they wish to be associated with whiteness which is in essence is the definition of being an American, which makes sense since it has been clarified time and time again that you cannot retain your culture and be considered American you must buy into the core foundation and principles of this country and its functioning and consistently oppressive governing foundations/structure and its founding fathers, not just the documents they created paint a beautiful picture of an evil empire. To me this leads people to do a few things 1) shedding the term African from their identity 2) and accepting being a “Black American,” because the diaspora is powerful and even though people experience painful resentment from some “Africans”; which can be resentment for many reasons, maybe its guilt for the role their ancestors played in participating in the slave trade or maybe because they have been brainwashed like most people across the world who have been molested by western dominance. Across all religions, classes, genders, sexualities, etc the common binding factor for the disaspora is the connection to African that people deny now because of years of propaganda after Malcolm’s assassination because it was clear the power that exist by 1) unifying across the world 2) no longer considering ones self to be a minority 3) being able to combat the attack on the non western world with a particular focus on the geopolitical assassination and rape of Africa. Malcolm’s OAAU is still very relevant today and would still be successful in bringing about meaningful change and unity for people of Afirkan dissent and people of color across the world.
If you never meet your mother; that does not change the biological fact that she is your mother, no matter what anyone says. You may consider your surrogate mother your real parent, but what about when you realize that your surrogate mother treats you different from their other children because you are not biologically the same or actually her blood. And that your surrogate mother didn’t rescue you from your biological mother, as you have been taught growing up, but instead you were kidnapped from your biological mother for all these years and you were taught (by your surrogate mother) to hate your biological mother and disassociate yourself from her. I believe I would begin to develop a resentment towards my surrogate mother and much of that which has been nurtured in me would have to be explored, challenged and changed. But many others would find it TOO hard to believe, TOO devastating a fact to believe, LIE to themselves to spare themselves the heart-ache of having to identify with the dominated biological mother who lost her child(ren). Of course this is not uncommon, and never was, many African Americans loved their masters during slavery, just as now many minorities love our politicians and business men and our world’s wealthy folks, but cannot and will not even fight for reform, let alone revolution, for our own self interest. We love the republicans or the democrats and get caught up in this bullshit when at the end of the day NO ONE is looking where the attention needs to be paid because the poor, of all races/ethnicties/nationalities have been forgotten as the forgotten people there existence is only on paper and blogs until one of them make it out and “succeed” and tell their “uplifting” boot strap story and tokenize their selves, their people, and their experience.
And the way many people claim that the good of America is this and that and blah blah – to me that is not America. Those ideals and beliefs that America claims to be or to stand for that is actually what America crushes and controls because it threatens what actually America is. A “better America” is not “America” at all
The easiest answer is that “No one is free until everyone is free” – Fannie Lou Hammer, because before you are anything you area human being and many of our human brothers and sisters are being tortured and devastated by the hands of other human brothers and sisters.
