Thoughts & Perspectives
This may be a little bit of old news (like, a week old), but I just had to say something about this whole Jena 6 matter. You all may remember my brief rant about the Jena 6 boys about a month back. I was rather perturbed by all the publicity, "love", and donations the boys were receiving in spite of what was going on with the young woman, Megan Williams in West Virginia.
I have to be brutally honest in admitting that I'm really happy I wasn't very supportive of the Jena 6 boys. Especially after seeing this. Although I didn't co-sign on the issue, I'm still quite pissed at these pictures.
I know that I can be especially hard on my people. It's not to be nasty, or to always be the dissenter, it really is out of love. It's also out of the belief that we can do better. Considering myself a member of the talented tenth has little to nothing to do with the fact that I'm college-educated, or my socioeconomic background. To understand the talented tenth; to be a part of it, means that you (the 10%) are responsible for the other 90%. Therefore, in spite of those Jena 6 boys looking like fools, I too, look like a damn fool.
As someone who is just naturally over-analytical and a political scientist (it's true, I really am!), it's important for me to do as much research as humanly possible. It's also important to look at situations from all angles and be able to step back to fully assess the matter without bias. This is especially hard to do when it comes to matters of the heart and issues dealing with Black people.
Believe you me, I want us to have it all. I want us to be able to form united fronts like Jewish people. I want us to own our business and continue to generate money within our own communities, yet still have significant influences on the rest of the world. I just want a few bad apples in the bunch. But in dealing and thinking with the talented tenth frame of mind, that's impossible. Unfortunately, there are some Blacks that just won't ever get it; and because so many of us hold out so much hope, we continue to be hoodwinked and bamboozled.
This is especially hard for me to grapple because, personally, I know that I can be extremely sensitive about racial equality and feeling slighted because of color. So I won't say that we should be desensitize or allow ourselves to become jaded to blatant wrongdoings. My charge is that we be more tentative. A lot of people, sometimes, are looking for a cause to jump on. I don't think it's an act of hopping on a bandwagon, it's an act of desperation. We want things to change so badly; to see those imaginary Berlin-like walls to finally come toppling down, that we'll march and protest anything.
When we do this, our pleas either go unheard, unnoticed, or disregarded. We can't always cry wolf. I know that at times, we really aren't and that there's a genuine injustice at hand. Trust when I say that, to them, we ask for too much. Yet, they don't realize that there is so much owed to us, most of which can't be returned.
The battle that needs to be fought is peace, not appeasement. Reparations are justifiably due, but it's only something to appease us. Equal employment opportunities, decent school systems, health care, etc...these are things that we simply aren't going to get. Let's be real about it. Equality is a mere ideology in the U.S. I say peace, because we simply need to be at peace, as best we can, with the situation of injustice. We know, good and well, what to expect and what we're going to receive.
Instead of looking for handouts and making demands of others (non-Blacks), we have to take accountability for our own misguidance.
So the next step from here is discussing what we do with these Jena 6 boys.
This may be a little bit of old news (like, a week old), but I just had to say something about this whole Jena 6 matter. You all may remember my brief rant about the Jena 6 boys about a month back. I was rather perturbed by all the publicity, "love", and donations the boys were receiving in spite of what was going on with the young woman, Megan Williams in West Virginia.
I have to be brutally honest in admitting that I'm really happy I wasn't very supportive of the Jena 6 boys. Especially after seeing this. Although I didn't co-sign on the issue, I'm still quite pissed at these pictures.
I know that I can be especially hard on my people. It's not to be nasty, or to always be the dissenter, it really is out of love. It's also out of the belief that we can do better. Considering myself a member of the talented tenth has little to nothing to do with the fact that I'm college-educated, or my socioeconomic background. To understand the talented tenth; to be a part of it, means that you (the 10%) are responsible for the other 90%. Therefore, in spite of those Jena 6 boys looking like fools, I too, look like a damn fool.
As someone who is just naturally over-analytical and a political scientist (it's true, I really am!), it's important for me to do as much research as humanly possible. It's also important to look at situations from all angles and be able to step back to fully assess the matter without bias. This is especially hard to do when it comes to matters of the heart and issues dealing with Black people.
Believe you me, I want us to have it all. I want us to be able to form united fronts like Jewish people. I want us to own our business and continue to generate money within our own communities, yet still have significant influences on the rest of the world. I just want a few bad apples in the bunch. But in dealing and thinking with the talented tenth frame of mind, that's impossible. Unfortunately, there are some Blacks that just won't ever get it; and because so many of us hold out so much hope, we continue to be hoodwinked and bamboozled.
This is especially hard for me to grapple because, personally, I know that I can be extremely sensitive about racial equality and feeling slighted because of color. So I won't say that we should be desensitize or allow ourselves to become jaded to blatant wrongdoings. My charge is that we be more tentative. A lot of people, sometimes, are looking for a cause to jump on. I don't think it's an act of hopping on a bandwagon, it's an act of desperation. We want things to change so badly; to see those imaginary Berlin-like walls to finally come toppling down, that we'll march and protest anything.
When we do this, our pleas either go unheard, unnoticed, or disregarded. We can't always cry wolf. I know that at times, we really aren't and that there's a genuine injustice at hand. Trust when I say that, to them, we ask for too much. Yet, they don't realize that there is so much owed to us, most of which can't be returned.
The battle that needs to be fought is peace, not appeasement. Reparations are justifiably due, but it's only something to appease us. Equal employment opportunities, decent school systems, health care, etc...these are things that we simply aren't going to get. Let's be real about it. Equality is a mere ideology in the U.S. I say peace, because we simply need to be at peace, as best we can, with the situation of injustice. We know, good and well, what to expect and what we're going to receive.
Instead of looking for handouts and making demands of others (non-Blacks), we have to take accountability for our own misguidance.
So the next step from here is discussing what we do with these Jena 6 boys.
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