āMotives and thoughts. Check your motives and thoughts.ā Ā Ā
14 years ago I attended an event at Los Angeles Southwest College where social and political commentator Tavis Smiley was the featured speaker. That day he made a statement that has impacted how I view my blackness and my place in the world. Ā Ā
The event was held for black middle and high school students from the area as a means to stress the importance for them to start preparing critically for their future. A few fellow Santa Monica College students and I served as chaperones. About halfway through his talk in the auditorium the whispering chatter that filled the room - chaperones included - had reached the same octave as Smileyās own voice and it was visible, he was mad. For the next five minutes - much like a parent restoring order at the dinner table - Smiley gave us a verbal beat down. In the middle of that tongue-lashing he got my attention with a very direct declaration that keeps me woke 14 years later.
Smiley said my generation was spoiled because we were the first generation of black people to not have to go through a major struggle. He said we didnāt have slavery, Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Movement to fight through. He said it would be disrespectful to our ancestors and grandparents who persevered through each of those unfathomable eras to squander opportunities afforded to us by their sacrifices. He said, simply, we owe them our success.
He was right. In every syllable he spoke he was right...except on the one aspect where he couldnāt have been more wrong.
My generation is going through a major struggle. My generation has capitalized, greatly, on the sacrifices of our ancestors and grandparents to reach unprecedented heights as individuals. However, collectively, my generation is going through the same major struggle of previous generations; the struggle to be heard, truly HEARD when calling out racial injustice, in hopes that our black lives will matter, truly MATTER, in decisions made and actions taken to address our concerns.
When Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid, Jeremy Lane and Brandon Marshall all take a knee during the national anthem before football games to protest racial injustice theyāre not being anti-American, theyāre not shaming Francis Scott Keyās callous poem and theyāre not spitting on the sacrifices of our courageous service members. Kaepernick has made his case on those issues very clear.
āThe message is that we have a lot of issues in this country that we need to deal with. We have a lot of people that are oppressed. We have a lot of people that arenāt treated equally, that arenāt given equal opportunities. Police brutality is a huge thing that needs to be addressed. There are a lot of issues that need to be talked about, need to be brought to life and we need to fix those things,ā Kaepernick told reporters after the 49ers fourth preseason game against the Chargers on military appreciation night.
The truth in that statement should hit home, if you take a minute to really hear him.
You should hear the concerns of black people in North Carolina who donāt want their voting rights suppressed as state lawmakers tried to do with voting law provisions the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said targeted them āwith almost surgical precision.ā You should hear the anguish in the voice of Michael Brownās mother, who lost her son days after accomplishing her most incredible feat: getting him to graduate high school in a school district that is āamong the poorest and most segregated in Missouri.ā You should hear the final breaths of Eric Garner.
But the conversation those players in protest are pushing us to have that acknowledges the existence of oppression in our education system, that acknowledges unequal treatment in a justice system rampant with racial bias and that acknowledges hiring, training and engagement policies in some police departments donāt always align with the best interests of the communities officers serve has proven too difficult for far too long. I get it. Itās hard. Itās ugly. Itās demoralizing. So, instead of getting our hands dirty to get to the core of the injustices weāve become accustomed to, the prejudices we harbor and the apathy we display toward one another in order to find some semblance of understanding, weāve determined itās not necessary because weāve time-traveled into some arbitrary universe called a āpost-racial society.ā
What is promising, though, is seeing that as more NFL players have joined Kaepernick in calling for social change, itās forced, at least, the start of that conversation to happen. I hope it continues. For it to be successful, though, willful ignorance must end. In the age of Google, it can no longer be acceptable for a prominent college football analyst like Paul Finebaum to say āthis country is not oppressing black people,ā only to backtrack by saying āI didnāt have a good grasp of the situation.ā Information is far too accessible to play that game anymore. Maybe if he heard Shannon Sharpeās perspective on the matter as a black man of affluence, heād understand the gravity of our current state of affairs. Sure, if youāre not black youāll never fully grasp the daily burden we carry of being seen as a potential problem but as the lyricist Black Ice in his poem āThe Ugly Showā says, āIām telling you, you learn so much, money, if you just open up a book and look inside. Thatās where they hide the evidence.ā It just takes the effort and an informed society is an active one.
Undoubtedly, since Iām talking about social injustice against black people, someone will ask the question: Well, what about black on black crime? Well, itās a travesty in every way imaginable. Chicago is often used as an example when having that debate. The fact that Chicago has seen 500 homicides in predominantly black neighborhoods should make us all, frankly, angry - angry at the black men killing each other, angry at the parentās whoāve failed the black men killing each other and angry at city officials whoāve failed to provide jobs and a better education system for the black men killing each other. The same can be said for every black neighborhood - from Oakland to Baltimore - where violence persists. And as Chicago Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton plainly put it, āAs a community, we can't have it both ways. Either we want violent criminals off the street or we don't.ā Having said all that, calling out black on black crime is a red herring. The sad truth is that black on black crime is no more extreme than white on white crime or Latino on Latino crime, etc. From 1980 to 2008, 84 percent of white people were killed by other white people and 93 percent of black people were killed by other black people, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Colin Kaepernick may not be the Jim Brown-type messenger that people are ready to embrace but nonetheless heās provided an opportunity to, once again, have a dignified conversation about race in America.
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