Wandering off the plantation
In the wake of Trevon Martin’s killing some entertainers vowed to boycott Florida; Stevie Wonder was one of them and I hated him for that. However, no individual should be judged or defined by one isolated act. Perhaps due to his personal share of adversity or maybe because he became famous in a different era, Stevie always sprinkled his contagious funky beat with tales of love and devotion; his emergency was that the world was in need of love then and he hoped that some day love would reign throughout the world.
Before him, Dr King and many other black leaders and celebrities denounced racism from religious, human and existencial perspectives. That is unfortunately not the case today. Rich spoiled entertainers and sports celebrities embrace martyrdom in an effort to rewrite history; the narrative is no longer pro black/white but totally and decisively anti white. There is a distinct edge of vendetta beneath the narrative and it seems that some blacks; conspicuously coached by dangerous white elitists, are solely interested in feeding whites the same poison that was forced on them decades ago; as if one wrong could right another wrong.
On the other side we have those who deny the very existence of racism and claim that it is all a communist plot to destroy America from within; well I’ve got news for both: racism exists, it is entrenched within the very fabric of our society and in the world in general and it is a pest very difficult to deal with. It is insulting that someone with a state of the art raincoat tells a naked homeless person caught in a storm that it is not raining. The vestiges of racism are so vivid that whenever a white person accuses another of racism, which lately has become a political weapon rather than a racional statement, my response is always to ask the accuser how many blacks he or she has on speed dial; the answer is invariably an unintelligible lip twist with some sort of grudging monosyllable.
But I refuse to accept that the approach has to be confrontational, antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The world is not theirs, it’s not mine, it’s not his or her; this is OUR world and it is in need of love as it was never before. I refuse to look at white people with suspicion; and I loath the notion that they have to be submitted to the same barbaric practices we were submitted decades ago. I don’t want them to go through the same ordeal, I would rather assume that I took the slaps on both cheeks so that they wouldn’t have to take them; that I fearfully stared at that charred cross in my yard so that they never had to go through such a nerve wrecking experience. My goal can never be to inflict on others what was inflicted on me; on the contrary, my goal should always be to make sure no other human being ever faces what I faced. It is imperative that we all heal together.