On December 1, 1955, a young woman in Montgomery, Alabama sat down. And like the flap of a butterfly's wings, the ripples began and have continued throughout the decades.
She has been revered for her protest, silent as it was. Along with Dr. King, Malcolm X, WEB DuBois, Nelson Mandela and scores of other African Americans, she paved a road often riddled with potholes, toward civil rights. But let's go back in time before Rosa Parks sat. Let us go back to 1501, when Africans began to be enslaved. Today, we would call this human trafficking, and if we found even one of our friends guilty of being involved, would disentangle ourselves from them faster than one could say Knockoff Purses. (But that is a story for another time).
We know from our history books the abuse dealt to the slaves- the beatings, the rapes, the death by illness and neglect, the starvation. We know that they often had no one to cling to but the families they made in the fields and in the kitchens- a kinship forged by tragedy. And yet many of us believe that after the Emancipation Proclamation, all became well in the world, and the black people left surviving in this country were suddenly free. Many among us choose to forget that until a mere 147 years ago, black men weren't able to vote. And of course, it took fifty more years until the women were entered into the political fold. And despite these baby steps into the world of equal rights, black men were still being lynched. We would like to think this happened only in the sticks of the deep south by uneducated hicks wielding torches, but these lynchings happened all the way up the spine of the United States, and were done by men with college degrees and business suits (and some with white sheets and hoods). There were children hung from trees, shot in cold blood, and mutilated.
And to add insult to injury, these same people who lived life in fear, also were made to live in segregation. They were forced into filthy bathrooms, made to drink from separate water fountains, and as my story begins, forced to sit in the back of the bus. But then a woman came and sat. She sat where she wanted because she knew she had the right and it was about damn time.
I saw a beautiful montage of pictures on CNN this morning, so intensely haunting and lovely all at the same time, that I cried. I have cried a lot lately. I keep looking around at my fellow Americans wondering what happened. In 2008, I thought we had finally started figuring things out. We voted in a black man! And he was smart, and charismatic, and funny, and diplomatic, and he was a good family man, with no concubines or prostitutes muddying up his past. He may not have made all the financial or political decisions that everyone could agree on, but as a guy, he was pretty great, and he led with heart and morality. And for eight years, I thought that progress was being made. And now I look at the last six months here in this "progressive" country of ours, and I think about what it must be like to be a minority. What it must be like to have five times more people with their skin color imprisoned than whites. What it must be like to have 25% less college graduates with dark skin versus light. To see the pictures of the senate and the house and compare the amount of Caucasians to African Americans. To have the first black president be accused of being a religion he isn't, because people make up their minds without reading. I imagine what it would feel like to be black and to be pulled over, when even as a white woman (who statistically rarely gets killed by police), my heart hammers the second I see those flashing lights. Black people are killed by police 2.5 times more often than white people. Let that statistic sit with you for a moment. For every white guy shot, there are 2.5 black people. And so black people started the Black Lives Matter Movement. And without delving too deeply into this, it is safe to say that they were not saying Kittens Lives Don't Matter, or Pregnant Lives Don't Matter, or Living in Mom's Basement Playing Video Games Lives Don't Matter, or god forbid- White Lives Don't Matter. They were simply asking the rest of us to acknowledge that things aren't going in the right direction. They were asking the rest of us to recognize that while slavery might be theoretically over, the blacks in this country are often held hostage by their skin tone, and by our ignorance. And yet, many white people took offense to this. Despite our history of having it made, we said nope- you can't even have that. You just aren't allowed to say that you matter. Some people had the gonads enough to say that this was reverse racism. Apparently, having a TV show with all black characters is "reverse racism", and hip hop is "reverse racism" and Black History Month is "reverse racism", because, like a toddler with a Tonka Truck, it's MINE MINE MINE.
So then we have these confederate flags. Bold they are, with their big fat vaguely British X and their American colors. They are waved from pickup trucks and yards alike all across the south. I lived down there for a bit, and got into a bit of an argument with someone who claimed it was all about their heritage. But the fact is, we could use that excuse about pretty much everything born in shit. We could hang dirty underwear from the wreath hook on our front doors and proclaim them a symbol of our history. We could place the coordinates of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs front and center on the Empire State Building. But we don't. Because they are crass reminders of things that shouldn't happen. And so the confederate flags were pulled down. And the process to remove statues of men who literally fought to make sure blacks stayed enslaved began, and to my absolute wonderment, people fucking protested this. They bought tiki torches from their friendly neighborhood tool store and like tools themselves took to the streets like frat boys with nothing better to do. And then this big white guy who has always had money, and done not so great things with it, along with other parts of his body, a guy who has lost lawsuits about keeping black people from finding homes, decides to say that those pointy hat wearing motherfuckers are AOK. In fact, some of them are darn good peeps. If he were ever to deign to drink Budweiser, he would have a drink with 'em!
And now our story comes full circle, because ladies and gentlemen, we have some people who have decided to sit. Or take a knee. Very quietly, with no fanfare, they have chosen to protest the last five hundred years of absolute fucking nonsense. They aren't hitting anyone or lighting anyone on fire. And unlike Michael Vick (who wasn't fired), they aren't abusing dogs. And unlike Aaron Hernandez (who wasn't fired), they aren't murdering people. And unlike Darren Sharper, (who was only fired after about half a dozen rapes), they aren't sexually assaulting anyone. They are just choosing to send a message once poetically uttered by Twisted Sister. We're not Going to Take it Anymore.
And somehow, white people have managed to make it all about them again. Apparently, these knee-takers, who literally are only on their knee for less than five minutes, are ruining football- a game where grown men in tights jump on each other to grab a ball made from a dead pig. Our own president called them sons of bitches- and boy, if I had a dime for every time a white guy decided it was within his rights to call a black guy a name, I would have a nice fat sack of dimes with which to beat them. And then he ironically called for them to be fired. Because hey, nothing says hypocrisy like the guy who is on the teeter totter of impeachment for fraud, conspiracy and treason like proclaiming strangers be fired for doing. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.
And sure, you can say they aren't doing their jobs. But oddly enough, they are protected from having to pledge allegiance to a flag or a country by the very constitution everyone decides to quote only when it suits them. Seems to me, they get up in their tights and jump on other dudes as soon as that song is over, and they are doing what they are being paid to do. They aren't being paid to make you feel better about your white privilege. They aren't being paid to pretend it is the media that is dividing us. They aren't being paid to sing a song written before they were even considered legal citizens of this country.
So, here is my advice to everyone up in arms about a bunch of men all standing (or kneeling) together in brotherhood. YOU STAND. Stand for something other than tailgate parties and cheerleaders. Read up on some black history, talk to your kids about not being little assholes to other kids who don't look like them. Stop whispering about affirmative action like you would about catching the clap. Share the goddamn Tonka Truck, and let someone else get a word in edge wise. And here is the best part- it won't hurt a bit.
And just so everyone can see how powerful it looks when people decide to work TOGETHER:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/us/nfl-anthem-protests-cnnphotos/index.html
She has been revered for her protest, silent as it was. Along with Dr. King, Malcolm X, WEB DuBois, Nelson Mandela and scores of other African Americans, she paved a road often riddled with potholes, toward civil rights. But let's go back in time before Rosa Parks sat. Let us go back to 1501, when Africans began to be enslaved. Today, we would call this human trafficking, and if we found even one of our friends guilty of being involved, would disentangle ourselves from them faster than one could say Knockoff Purses. (But that is a story for another time).
We know from our history books the abuse dealt to the slaves- the beatings, the rapes, the death by illness and neglect, the starvation. We know that they often had no one to cling to but the families they made in the fields and in the kitchens- a kinship forged by tragedy. And yet many of us believe that after the Emancipation Proclamation, all became well in the world, and the black people left surviving in this country were suddenly free. Many among us choose to forget that until a mere 147 years ago, black men weren't able to vote. And of course, it took fifty more years until the women were entered into the political fold. And despite these baby steps into the world of equal rights, black men were still being lynched. We would like to think this happened only in the sticks of the deep south by uneducated hicks wielding torches, but these lynchings happened all the way up the spine of the United States, and were done by men with college degrees and business suits (and some with white sheets and hoods). There were children hung from trees, shot in cold blood, and mutilated.
And to add insult to injury, these same people who lived life in fear, also were made to live in segregation. They were forced into filthy bathrooms, made to drink from separate water fountains, and as my story begins, forced to sit in the back of the bus. But then a woman came and sat. She sat where she wanted because she knew she had the right and it was about damn time.
I saw a beautiful montage of pictures on CNN this morning, so intensely haunting and lovely all at the same time, that I cried. I have cried a lot lately. I keep looking around at my fellow Americans wondering what happened. In 2008, I thought we had finally started figuring things out. We voted in a black man! And he was smart, and charismatic, and funny, and diplomatic, and he was a good family man, with no concubines or prostitutes muddying up his past. He may not have made all the financial or political decisions that everyone could agree on, but as a guy, he was pretty great, and he led with heart and morality. And for eight years, I thought that progress was being made. And now I look at the last six months here in this "progressive" country of ours, and I think about what it must be like to be a minority. What it must be like to have five times more people with their skin color imprisoned than whites. What it must be like to have 25% less college graduates with dark skin versus light. To see the pictures of the senate and the house and compare the amount of Caucasians to African Americans. To have the first black president be accused of being a religion he isn't, because people make up their minds without reading. I imagine what it would feel like to be black and to be pulled over, when even as a white woman (who statistically rarely gets killed by police), my heart hammers the second I see those flashing lights. Black people are killed by police 2.5 times more often than white people. Let that statistic sit with you for a moment. For every white guy shot, there are 2.5 black people. And so black people started the Black Lives Matter Movement. And without delving too deeply into this, it is safe to say that they were not saying Kittens Lives Don't Matter, or Pregnant Lives Don't Matter, or Living in Mom's Basement Playing Video Games Lives Don't Matter, or god forbid- White Lives Don't Matter. They were simply asking the rest of us to acknowledge that things aren't going in the right direction. They were asking the rest of us to recognize that while slavery might be theoretically over, the blacks in this country are often held hostage by their skin tone, and by our ignorance. And yet, many white people took offense to this. Despite our history of having it made, we said nope- you can't even have that. You just aren't allowed to say that you matter. Some people had the gonads enough to say that this was reverse racism. Apparently, having a TV show with all black characters is "reverse racism", and hip hop is "reverse racism" and Black History Month is "reverse racism", because, like a toddler with a Tonka Truck, it's MINE MINE MINE.
So then we have these confederate flags. Bold they are, with their big fat vaguely British X and their American colors. They are waved from pickup trucks and yards alike all across the south. I lived down there for a bit, and got into a bit of an argument with someone who claimed it was all about their heritage. But the fact is, we could use that excuse about pretty much everything born in shit. We could hang dirty underwear from the wreath hook on our front doors and proclaim them a symbol of our history. We could place the coordinates of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs front and center on the Empire State Building. But we don't. Because they are crass reminders of things that shouldn't happen. And so the confederate flags were pulled down. And the process to remove statues of men who literally fought to make sure blacks stayed enslaved began, and to my absolute wonderment, people fucking protested this. They bought tiki torches from their friendly neighborhood tool store and like tools themselves took to the streets like frat boys with nothing better to do. And then this big white guy who has always had money, and done not so great things with it, along with other parts of his body, a guy who has lost lawsuits about keeping black people from finding homes, decides to say that those pointy hat wearing motherfuckers are AOK. In fact, some of them are darn good peeps. If he were ever to deign to drink Budweiser, he would have a drink with 'em!
And now our story comes full circle, because ladies and gentlemen, we have some people who have decided to sit. Or take a knee. Very quietly, with no fanfare, they have chosen to protest the last five hundred years of absolute fucking nonsense. They aren't hitting anyone or lighting anyone on fire. And unlike Michael Vick (who wasn't fired), they aren't abusing dogs. And unlike Aaron Hernandez (who wasn't fired), they aren't murdering people. And unlike Darren Sharper, (who was only fired after about half a dozen rapes), they aren't sexually assaulting anyone. They are just choosing to send a message once poetically uttered by Twisted Sister. We're not Going to Take it Anymore.
And somehow, white people have managed to make it all about them again. Apparently, these knee-takers, who literally are only on their knee for less than five minutes, are ruining football- a game where grown men in tights jump on each other to grab a ball made from a dead pig. Our own president called them sons of bitches- and boy, if I had a dime for every time a white guy decided it was within his rights to call a black guy a name, I would have a nice fat sack of dimes with which to beat them. And then he ironically called for them to be fired. Because hey, nothing says hypocrisy like the guy who is on the teeter totter of impeachment for fraud, conspiracy and treason like proclaiming strangers be fired for doing. Absolutely. Nothing. Wrong.
And sure, you can say they aren't doing their jobs. But oddly enough, they are protected from having to pledge allegiance to a flag or a country by the very constitution everyone decides to quote only when it suits them. Seems to me, they get up in their tights and jump on other dudes as soon as that song is over, and they are doing what they are being paid to do. They aren't being paid to make you feel better about your white privilege. They aren't being paid to pretend it is the media that is dividing us. They aren't being paid to sing a song written before they were even considered legal citizens of this country.
So, here is my advice to everyone up in arms about a bunch of men all standing (or kneeling) together in brotherhood. YOU STAND. Stand for something other than tailgate parties and cheerleaders. Read up on some black history, talk to your kids about not being little assholes to other kids who don't look like them. Stop whispering about affirmative action like you would about catching the clap. Share the goddamn Tonka Truck, and let someone else get a word in edge wise. And here is the best part- it won't hurt a bit.
And just so everyone can see how powerful it looks when people decide to work TOGETHER:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/09/us/nfl-anthem-protests-cnnphotos/index.html
Bless you and thank you, you brought me to tears. It is a sad state of affairs when we have education by meme.
ReplyDeleteBrilliantly perfect.
ReplyDelete