Gentlemen,
Maybe it’s time, once and for all to embrace and acknowledge our inner victim. Let’s face it: you’re Black. It is your lot, your fate.
It’s not gonna change.
So, let’s get on with it, why don’t we. Face that assumption. Stare it down and move on.
You and I can spend the rest of our allotted 7 or 8 decades, bemoaning injustice, complaining about the various and diverse inequities that we face or we can move past it.
For God’s sake, what other choice do we have? None of us can change the color of our skin, but we can change how and what we think about the victimization aspects.
Yes, our young men do have a tendency to occasionally end up being brutally murdered by the police departments across this country. And yes, because of a festering sickness called racism, which is firmly entrenched in the hearts of millions, really bad things happen to Black men in this country.
It’s hard to explain it. American-style racism is uniquely perverse. It’s real intent is to humiliate belittle and violate, with the mandatory caveat of desecrating one’s sense of self. And yes, African-Americans have indeed been its preferred victims.
But, in the scheme of things, with so much horror in this world, is it really that bad? Can it be overcome is the question we must ask ourselves and the only correct answer is that, yes, yes it can be overcome.
And, if that is not your personal conclusion, if this is not how you come to terms with it, start now.
It’s actually liberating.
So own it. Confront it. Even get mad about it, and then move on because you really have no other choice. You will drive yourself crazy worrying about it otherwise, and that would be far worse.
African-Americans have always prevailed when taking this, the long view. We’ve overcome slavery, gut wrenching lynchings, rape and violence of every type.
But we move on, we live to fight another day. We do so by looking after our lives and the well-being of our families.
We can’t allow Mike Brown or the next absolutely promised and predictable shooting to take our eyes off of the real world.
The real world is, there have been hundreds of African-Americans shot and killed since Mike Brown was killed. In Chicago alone, there were 244 shootings, with 155 fatalities while we waited for the Ferguson grand jury.
And while I’m not intending to minimize the loss of this young man and its related horror or the double standards of American justice for Black people, yes, we should be angry, but shouldn’t we be even more horrified at the self perpetuating violence as well?
So, get your victimization on. Taste it, bear it, but as Barack Obama told us, “stop whining, stop complaining. Take off your bedroom slippers, we’ve got work to do.”
