A while ago, I curtailed my frequent blogging in order to have the time (since I had more of it) to spend with family and friends and to please certain folks that said that I lived way too much in this virtual world than in the real one. I also chose to shut the hell up about political things because early on (like when I went to work on the Obama campaign in 08'... That early), I saw a pattern.
I didn't predict anything. I didn't go out and warn anyone. I made snide comments to my wife and close friends about it and for the most part, they agreed because they saw some things too. Things changed. It was more visual and industrialized. It began to manifest itself in legal circles and in the water cooler conversations of folk that had kept long quiet over other things... They always had questions and opinions, so did it really change? The questions were simple:
- questions about my hair (?)
- religious beliefs
- what I did in the privacy of my home
- what I read and listened to
- what my influences were
- about my patriotism
- where my parents and their parents came from
Stuff like that. Questions based out of fear... Fear of the unknown. The moment a certain event happened in the scant first days of November of 2008, that fear lead folks to realize a permanent change in the look of the structure of history which could lead to (in their minds) catastrophic levels of failure and destruction based on who now held the reigns. All of this was based on what someone
looked like. It no longer mattered, even though the majority of folks that looked, spoke and acted like this one person had a major hand in building, legislating, raising of the children and fighting for the spot where you read this. The cubicle, your sofa, your bed, laptop and wireless internet included. But because some folks didn't know...
I'm sure somewhere down the line in my last 25 years or so of adult life there was an invitation to my book club meeting. Or barbeque. Or baby shower (I've hosted 3 at my spot). Or even bidwhist and fish fry night. I invited a lot of folk only to have a chosen few actually take me up on the offer and come through the crib. I'm also sure over the last three to four hundred years when were were having sex, secretly baring each other's children and living like families, lusting after each other totally taking advantage of and disavowing all of the laws taboo in those gray areas of the red and blue states from then to now by participation, you've seen how we were livin'.
Even though I know that probably wouldn't have mattered in your eyes seeing that a lot of times when it came down to striking the record, they were firmly shut. Names, places and deeds were never recorded.
I'm still paying on (and have defaulted on 2) student loans that I used to educate myself. A lot of folks I personally know are either somewhat or very heavily educated as well. I've bought and sold a piece of real estate, the majority of folk I frequent own and have owned property as well. I'm not a churchgoer, but dammit, if I ain't invited to Sunday service (as well as holiday food fests) by every sibling, cousin, co-worker and neighbor. I am also a veteran of the United States Armed Forces, and I spend maybe a quarter of my time with the men and women like myself who have served. I know a lot of blood relatives as well as folk that are no relation to me that have folk laying in the ground because they chose to fight to uphold the freedoms of this land. Looking a lot like me.
Yet I am still marginalized.
Yet I am undervalued.
Yet I remain underestimated.
My brown cousins to the south are seen as 'mostly drug mules'
How am I supposed to take the passing of one on the longest sitting senators in our country's history when I know, but can't raise holy hell about his Civil Rights Bill filibuster when a true fucking idiot with a black board ridicules and calls himself correcting the words, intent and purpose of Martin Luther King Jr.?
When in confirmation hearings just yesterday, the recently departed senator's peers questioned, belittled and made political farce out of Justice Thurgood Marshall's intent, interpretation of law and impartial decisions?
You see, what had happened was... Racism never left. It never died. It was always taught and carried forward. It manifested itself in the dangling carrot of TV mini-series and open slots for shows in my youth and teen years of the 70s and 80s. It became the bottom, open bid space for negroes and boriqua who had the courage to step forward and offer a service over the years. It is the token spots on the board, the magical million dollar negro who scores touchdowns or could dunk a basketball that saved many corporate structures and created brand new ones, industries perhaps because that one person put asses in the seats.
We are the bronze spectacle. We have become equivalent to all three rings in the damned circus. The wonderment of what powers us and the curiosity on how and if we could do it again is still very present, as if the billions of autopsies from hung, beaten and shot descendants of the diaspora had not given enough answers.
And now my peers feed into the superhyperniggerisms because that rent is due. Gotta get your hair and nails done. Gotta have the latest must-haves sent down on that last memo from corporate... And then I chuckle when the clueless cats plead for peace on the newspaper and internet comment sections, wondering why we still isolate ourselves and have the mitigated gall to want to brand our own because that propels racism.
Simple: If Hollywood, corporate America and the like actually included brown folks back in the day... If history, art and science didn't shun the native peoples and immigrants from the diaspora and then teach it as if our ancestors had nothing to do with the advancement of anything... If a plaque honoring the slaves and free men (of all nationalities, because there were more than African descended slaves) who built the current capital of our great nation was placed in 1910 instead of 2010... If history, religion and legend were taught without an ounce of arrogance...
There would be no need for my Twitter timeline to still be scattered with bullshit observations of the BET Awards.
But I overstand. With the spending power ranked 11th in the world and with $2.3 billion spent on commercial advertising (just on the major networks and terrestrial radio), I get it that it is up to us to finance the exact systems that suppress us and deny us. And to think, most of em' still don't know who we are.
Wait... Does that mean that we're the scared ones?
