The hard truth-Understanding and overcoming haters

By J. Kojo Livingston
The Louisiana Weekly Contributing Columnist

One of the most difficult things for Black people to do is say something good about one another. We can slam each other for hours over any little thing, like some ugly shoes, for example. We can actually compliment other ethnic groups more readily than our own. And even when a Black person does or endeavors to do something good, there they are…the haters, trying to tear it down.

The first and most important rule is not to hate them back. Counter-hate is still hate and you don’t want to become a hater of any stripe. The world needs more positive energy.

Haters feed off of negativity. They rarely have anything constructive to say about a person, group or event. They don’t offer suggestions for improvement because their objective is to make you feel as bad, angry, self-righteous or hopeless as they feel at the time. That’s one way to tell when you’ve been in their presence, how do you feel when you walk away from a conversation with them?

Hating is not a sign of superior intellect. Any idiot can find something bad to say about anything or anyone in an imperfect world. Any moron can destroy an exquisite work of art in seconds. Any dolt can demolish a vehicle built by a team of brainy engineers. The genius is in finding the good where there appears to be none. The righteousness is in the ability to be uplifting even when things look bad. The superior person is the one who can offer a solution or a way up…even as the elevator plummets.

More than three decades ago I noticed the “hater” trend among Black activists. I was young in the movement and living in Atlanta. I noticed that with all the “Black love,” “Black consciousness” and “Black power” talk we did, it was almost impossible to find one activist that had anything good to say about any other activist. If you listened to all of them talk about each other you would conclude that we were all low-lifes. You would think that none of us was worth two cents.

During the seventies there were many great teachers and leaders. I sat under some and worked elbow to elbow with others. What saddened me was that if you complimented one great leader in front of another great leader (“Bro. Malik was really good at the rally”) the person listening would then utter a barrage of criticism and even petty nitpicking to counter the compliment.

Back then I coined a term for it; I call it “the gunslinger syndrome” folks shooting each other down, but today you would probably call it hate. I noticed this trend in other cities I would visit and I noticed it in other circles such as business and especially church. I still see it today.

And you wonder why we are losing? (And right now, we ARE losing, in case you did not notice.)

More than 30 years ago I committed myself to avoid “gun slinging,” to be as positive as possible, even toward those who criticized me. I have tried to be accountable for saying something constructive in the most intolerable situations. Why? Not because I’m more righteous than anyone else (I’m constantly reminded otherwise) but because I WANT TO WIN. I want our precious, critical Black Liberation Movement to succeed and I know that we can’t succeed if we are using all of our verbal and emotional ammunition against each other.

Next week we briefly examine the types of haters, the motives of haters and what we can do to reverse this progress-killing trend in our community.

Until then, Whatchagonna DO…to Release the Love?

This article originally published in the July 11, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.