The Hard Truth: An issue of facts vs frustration
19th March 2012 · 0 Comments
By Min. J. Kojo Livingston
Contributing Columnist
“White folks ain’t our problem. They ain’t doing nothing to us. It’s Black folks we have to worry about.”
Just about anytime a Black person does something evil or stupid you will hear a statement similar to the quote above. The statement is just not factually true or accurate.
Even when cops shoot our unarmed people like dogs in the streets some negro is going to say we should not be upset because Black folks kill Black folks too.
They miss the point. We should be outraged regardless of who attacks our people or our community. We must create effective ways to solve these problems. However any rational person or group deals with internal threats differently from external threats.
Any Black person who lives in New Orleans and claims white folks are not doing anything to us is either ignorant or in denial. Before Katrina white people were trying to decimate our population and take away any power we had. After Katrina they went nuts in housing, education, health care, government, policing and social services. The racism has been both open and palpable.
There is a serious movement within the Black community to absolve white people of any responsibility for any harm they have done to us in the past or present. I do not believe that the people who are committed to this way of thinking can be persuaded by reason. Their position is not based on reason but on frustration, fear and other emotions. You can tell this by their “solutions” to our problems: “All the Black mothers just need to start raising their children right,” or “Everybody just needs to go out and find a good paying job.”
They never propose a realistic program of action to address our issues. They just figure everyone should magically start doing the right thing or that everybody who does not start practicing responsible behavior should go to jail, as if that will fix things.
Somehow they ignore the fact that every system in this nation is owned and controlled by white people, even if operated by Black faces. Carter G. Woodson said, “When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.” Like it or not our thoughts are daily impacted by our enemies. Who can deny that the entire apparatus of this nation that shapes thinking is controlled by people other than us? The schools, the books, entertainment, most media are directed by groups and individuals who do not have our best interests at heart.
This system is in your head in ways that are obvious and in ways that are not so obvious. For example, we have to use their language to understand each other when discussing how to overcome their system. Even Black institutions are usually financed (therefore owned) by whites who set standards and conditions for giving their money. That’s why HBCUs don’t take the lead in solving the pressing issues of our race. The real owners might not like that.
When people like me try to address the root causes of Black uncivilized behavior we are often accused of making excuses for the wrong we do. Nothing is further from the truth.
There is a world of difference between addressing causes and making excuses for our self-destructive behaviors, which are deadly symptoms of something deeper. Those who actually work for liberation are responsible to analyze causes in order to find and Implement intelligent solutions. A dentist is not looking for an “excuse” for the pain in your tooth; she is trying to find the cause and address it, no matter how old or deep it is.
I hope that we can find some point of unity on this issue that will either a) enhance the work of those of us who do more than talk/blog; or b) cause opinionated spectators to “get in the game” and learn the practical side of trying to solve these issues.
If you agree that:
A) Exten-sive damage was deliberately done to our psyche through an aggressive international program of indoctrination, that used terror and twisted versions of the sciences and religion, beginning at least 500 years ago;
B) This program still permeates virtually all media and institutions today, overtly or subtly;
C) There has Never, EVER been an Equally Aggressive, Pervasive, or Well-Resourced National Program (theirs or ours) to heal/undo the physical, psychological, cultural, economic or emotional damage that was done and continues to be done right now;
Then by what means do you believe we should have overcome this assault in a mere two or three generations?
Somehow “just get over it” doesn’t cut it.
There are reasons for the stupid stuff we do, which defy the notion that some or all of us are simply inferior animals. Those of us who risk our lives addressing these issues cannot afford to base our work on shallow explanations, emotional frustration, or worst of all, the stale, repeated, rhetoric of white racists.
People, families, communities and nations don’t “just get better” without some form of intelligent intervention, just as most did not get sick or dysfunctional without some outside help.
Spectators don’t have to be realistic or practical; they will continue to call the game from the sidelines…until we all die out.
Black Liberators simply have a lot of WORK to do to reverse the self-hatred and lack of direction that leads us toward ignorance and uncivilized behavior. But just because it’s difficult, dangerous and frustrating doesn’t mean that we don’t have to do it.
It is our responsibility to honestly assess the Internal an external threats to our existence and resolve them…
…and That’s the Hard Truth!!!
This article was originally published in the March 19, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
