Read A MEME!
I have read many memes on the internet that state other people should raise their sons not to murder their own. Many women of color share the sentiment and I will never behave as if I do not feel an automatic justification to impose the statement itself. Black men, boys, and children are dying at alarming rates. Those who decide to see Black-on-Black crime and African American rate of incarceration as a point of concern where my worries would be better suited must also be reminded or perhaps educated that African-American men and women and other marginalized people of color have had laws created in order to lock them up that still remain on the books till this very day. Prisoners are utilized to fill positions of almost free wages in state and federal prisons and penitentiaries. Historically, prisoners were used after slavery ended to fulfill a labor need. Additionally, it is historically documented that the current state of Black on Black Crime was intentionally inserted by the federal government at the behest of a xenophobic leader. Intentionally, organizations that were founded for social justice and enrichment were infiltrated with drugs and guns within African-American Communities during the 70’s and 80’s. The Black community never recovered. Organizations like the Bloods, Crips, Black Panthers, social aid, pleasure clubs, and public Black figures were corrupted/murdered. Read it. Research it. The federal government planted and funneled crack to the black community to destroy it just the same way they allowed and may have even had a hand in the bombing and destruction of the Black Wall Street that existed in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After the 70’s and 80’s, coincidentally, the war on drugs started soon after the problem was filtered into and destroying black communities. The logic after breaking us was to fix us I suppose. Then a surreal attack happens. The amount of black people in jail was always significantly higher than any other group but they now made up 80% of the prison population. The government gave prisons a free labor source until kingdom come, given America’s laws. Within decades, African American contributors vanished from families and were left with irreparable damage to their family and communities.
Even still I read a meme that stated that people should raise their children to not murder black people. In a country that has desegregated after years of attempts for integration. Those raised a certain way took flight from schools and communities that tried its best to amalgamate our institutions. After years of desiring to be seen equally as human and as contributors to society, same as any other Race, we find ourselves still begging for another hue of human being to see black ones as human.
Reading the meme again, I asked myself, why do I even have to ask? It is no secret that there is no America, without the African-American. It has been proven for centuries now that we are a dynamic people. Survivors, good Samaritans, great doctors, capable lawyers, wonderful teachers, and so much more. Can we be more than mythical? Instead of attempting to abduct our joy, fashion, cadence, and rhetoric can we, all of us, be human same as the rest. Not strange, but merely disenfranchised. Literally, for centuries, we have been taken advantage of and left to figure it out for ourselves. Years’ worth of effort should have been poured into a people who continue to experience trauma for the horrific act of slavery even until today.
Don’t just raise your son not to kill mine, raise the intellect of an entire people and see us, all of us, as human. Same as you!
