Black Lives Matter
Stop Waiting for Someone Else to Save Black People
Street talk and the academic buzz of the academy alike seem fixated on the search for the next Black leader. Comparisons to historic Black heroes only fuel this conversation, as we wonder: Who will be the next MLK? The next Malcolm X?
Some have pinpointed the likes of DeRay Mckesson, widely regarded as the face of the Black Lives Matter movement, or journalist and social activist Shaun King, to fulfill these roles. However, these suggestions stem from a decidedly problematic logic.
Contemporary understandings of the historical struggle for Black liberation highlight only a few of the faces responsible for Black progress. Entire movements–be it the struggle to end American slavery, for Civil Rights, or the Haitian Revolution–are seemingly summed up at the whim of a single name.
Black history month itself is marked by a narrow number of faces, as if the summation of the Pan African struggle can be fully explained with the names Martin Luther King Jr., Toussaint L’Overture, Nelson Mandela, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks. In reality, Black progress has been fueled by a multitude of people from different ethnic backgrounds, and genders from college students to clergymen from all sorts of varying economic status.
Although the true reality of Black history is far more expensive than Eurocentric education curriculums and stereotypical ‘ethnic’ Hollywood blockbuster films, the pervasiveness of these narratives has already damaged the Black psyche.
As a result of the repetitive, circular rhetoric positing that is was solely the bold gestures of MLK at the March on Washington, and of Rosa Park’s defiance as she refused to be physically displaced by white supremacy, the Black Messiah Complex has descended on our communities. We are waiting for the next MLK, or Malcolm X, or Frederick Douglass. In short, we are waiting on someone to save us. In doing so, Black people effectively disqualify themselves from engaging in self-responsibility and self-liberation.
Fight For Justice And Chase Equality
Each of us has the potential to fight for justice and chase equality. Like Frederick Douglass created a platform for the expression of unique perspectives to advocate on behalf of the abolitionist movement in the form of The North Star, we too can influence the narrative by founding new publications, and submitting editorials to our local papers.
Like Rosa Parks we can refuse to be displaced by white supremacy, be it socially, economically or politically. Although poetic, we don’t needs Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech to ring endlessly in our ears to prevent us from losing sight of the vision of equality. Finally, like Malcolm X, we can continuously commit to the self-defense and to the pursuit of liberation–by any means necessary.
Sense Of Prejudice
We don’t need to to wait for another leader to rise to the forefront of the Black struggle–instead, each of us can mobilize to push back against white supremacy in our own lives.
A great deal of dark companions have been getting calls from white companions of late. Now and again they are from individuals we haven’t heard from in years, or know just in passing from work – individuals who have generally been excessively occupied for us. They need to discuss race and what can be done. Who better to make sense of prejudice for white individuals than individuals of color?
I’m anxious about the possibility that that instructional model won’t work.
Learning is tied in with freeing yourself up to individuals and encounters and looking to comprehend. Also, while you’re discussing race, it includes committing horrendous errors and getting your sentiments injured and not shutting the entryway when that occurs. White individuals can’t satisfy themselves with posing inquiries of individuals of color. They ought to be ready to confront a great deal of outrage and not recoil from it. Again and again, they’ve demonstrated that they are not ready for the passionate hotness, too able to even think about looking at.
