Saturday, July 7, 2012

"Happy White People Day" Indeed

SHE SAYS:


On July 4th, Chris Rock tweeted"Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks." And oh boy did that burn a bunch of White  folks biscuits. Why? What part of it wasn't true??

  The 1st Independence day was to declare  independence from Great Britain of primarily White men who owned property, followed by white men who did not own property and finally white women. Black people were not included in that declaration. He did not address how slavery originated, who owned the most slaves or any of the other irrelevant points people are raising.

 
Actually Chris Rock commemorated the day more appropriately than most. He made a statement about the systematic oppression of a people by their own government. Doesn't that just SCREAM 4th of July?

When White folk die or are mistreated it is a travesty of national or even global proportions. And do we ever move on from those tragedies? No. "We Will Remember" "Never Forget" If you even mention that the holocaust wasn't the greatest example of genocide, you are anti-Semitic.

White folk in America want us to forget about slavery. Guess what? We'd love to!  We have tried to assimilate for generations and just be Americans, but due to the dedication to racism that persists specifically against Blacks in this country; we cannot forget. 

 
When we forget and get comfortable we build our own profitable, self sufficient communities. And they are lynched burned to the ground. (Rosewood,Fl. 1923) When we forget and get comfortable we forget to remind our children to cross the road and not look a White person in the eye. (My Grandmother. Augusta, Ga. 1939) Our sons are killed for allegedly whistling at a White woman(Emmitt Till, Mississippi Delta 1955) . Shot at by the NYPD 41 times, killed while reaching for the wallet that holds the ID to identify himself to the officers. (Amadou Diallo Bronx, NY 1999) Or something as simple as a 13 year old boy being stopped frisked and questioned about  how he acquired his handheld video  game in his pocket. (My Nephew. Brooklyn, NY 2006)

So since Independence Day is the day that a group of people chose to declare their independence from a nation that enacted a system of oppression on some of it's people; Independence at it's core for Black people in America still has not come. Yes we've come a long way, but not far enough.

We cannot forget our history. Lest we be doomed to repeat it. And we are still recovering from the first pass. We still have to watch our backs in the nation of our birth; permanent prime suspects to a never ending crime. But much like my people before me I am hopeful, I am prayerful and I am expecting a miracle. I am expecting a true independence day for all Americans... Someday.

"It's been a long, long time coming. But I know a change is gonna come. " 


2 comments:

  1. Brilliantly written. Oh, Emmitt Till's official charge was, wait for it, "eyeballing" a white woman. (Nkb)

    ReplyDelete