The Gantt Report
I’ve been reading some of the writings of my friends, colleagues and even some of my enemies and I discovered that many of those persons are describing attacks taking place in African American communities as acts of war!
A war can certainly be more than an open, armed conflict between two countries or between factions in the same country.
A war can also be described as any active hostility, conflict or strife. It can be a war between the sexes, a war on poverty, a war on drugs, a war on crime, etc.
In my opinion, the worse kind of war you can have, the most volatile war you can have and the most deadly and damaging war you can have is a race war!
A race war doesn’t care who gets hurt. History can teach you that there is no war more bloody than a race war!
Now, in the news reports, opinion columns, blogs and internet posts I’ve perused some writers have described what is going on in some states, some cities and some neighborhoods as a war against Black people.
Well, I can’t disagree with the way things appear when Blackhawk and Apache helicopters are flying around the hood and I see armored personnel carriers and SWAT Teams at “launch sites” on the Black side of the rail road tracks.
I can’t deny that there has been a constant and significant increase in the number of acts of hatred, the number of ethnic slurs being used and said, the number of racist flags waved and racist symbols being openly shown and displayed, the number of Black churches being attacked, firebombed and destroyed and I can’t deny that Black women, men and children are being choked, hung and shot down in broad day light in Black communities just like people that are being shot in combat zones!
If a war is going on and you want to defend yourself, defend your community and protect your wives and children, you may want to consider putting together an army.
You may need an army because, fighting with marches hasn’t calmed the war-like storm, praying to the same God your attackers pray to hasn’t saved you, sitting in hasn’t lifted you up and voting hasn’t benefited you in the way that you are always told it would benefit you!
Black people can’t fight like two countries fight because the people that attack us have powerful weapons that we can’t go to sleep and dream that we can obtain.
But there is power in Black unity! The right community leadership can encourage us to put our differences aside and work together for at least a moment.
If you don’t know, I know that an army of Black sheep, led by a lion can defeat an army of lions led by a white sheep!
What we need to know right now is who is our lion?
Don’t you dare shout out any old name that comes into your head!
Lions, like people, are different. Some Black community lions live in the concrete jungle, dodging traps every day, avoiding badge wearing hunters and stalkers and can survive on what they can hustle up and live on what they can catch.
Then, there are Black community pussycats that may have their hair cut like lion hair, they may have the same skin color that a lion has and they may even have the same ancestry as other lions but that pussycat won’t fight anything. He will take off and run at the sight of a rat, two legged or four legged.
The worst Black community lion is the infamous Zoo Lion, the lion that only does what the zoo keeper tells him to do, what the zoo keeper tells him to say and he only acts in the way the zoo keeper tells him to act.
Who do you want to lead you in the battle against injustice, against police brutality, against poverty, against joblessness, against exploitation and against modern day racist oppression?
If there is a war being waged against African Americans and Black communities, perhaps we need to import some soldiers to fight to make things right rather than fight to march arm-in-arm to sing “We Shall Overcome” day after day and year in and year out! (Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere).
