BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Color Struck
October 1st, 2007
Some people may say I’m color struck because I regularly talk about race. It’s not that I’m color struck; it’s that I’ve been struck by color; and it’s continuous effects. Like El Hajj Shabazz (Malcolm X) said, “we didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us”.
In 1991 Clarence Thomas accused the Senate of conducting a “high-tech lynching” against him. Well the people of Jena Louisiana have decided, fuck high-tech, they’re just going to go with a regular old fashion style lynching.
Nooses, an all white jury, ridiculous and harsh charges against blacks when the perceived victim is white, and obstinate judge defying the law, no defense put on by court the appointed lawyer, etc. It reads like trials in the Deep South right out of the 1940s.
Stepha Henry goes missing in May, gets a couple of days of coverage, then her story and interview with police gets bumped for a blond pop star’s cruiser ride to court. Elizabeth Smart, Natalie Holloway, and Laci Peterson never got pushed off the map for anything. Even Madeleine McCain from across the ocean can get enormously more coverage than a black woman in the country where she disappeared. I even saw a full hour, Natalie Holloway special on Fox recently, two years after she went missing; yet nothing for Stepha in the same summer that she went missing.
There’s the despicable case of a 6 year old black girl being handcuffed and charged with felonies for acting out in class. It seems to nearly always happen to Black kids.
There would appear to be a campaign to criminalize our children in order to feed the prison industrial complex of for-profit prisons. They don’t make money without bodies in the cells. This campaign to criminalize; and the disparity in punishment by race, can be attested to by the Shaquanda Cotton case. Seven years for a shove while the same judge sentences a white teenager to probation for ARSON.
We are largely excluded culturally until white performers want to co-opt our cultural for their own benefit, the continent of our ancestors is completely written out of the history books as having done or contributed anything to humanity, our history in America is scarcely better represented, we’re stereotyped on tv, profiled on the interstate and in the department stores, shot dead in the street by the police for benign reasons, and cheated out of our money because of the color of our skin – oh, no you say?
In a most blatant and scientifically undeniable example that racism is indeed well and going strong in this country, and that it is institutionalized and ingrained into the fabric of the U.S.; a vast study shows by the numbers, that blacks with the same income, credit rating and other qualifications get hit with higher bank loans interest rates than their white counterparts . This is not a matter of perspective, antidotal evidence, subjectivity or anything of the like. Its scientific proof of the racism embedded into the fabric the U.S.
So it’s not so much that I’m not color struck, as I’m struck by color.
posted in Cultural, Racial Injustice, Social Commentary | | | View blog reactions |
8 Responses to “Color Struck”
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About The Blog
Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.
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Amen from the choir. What seems crazy to me, though, is that so many people just don’t want to hear about it. You are doing a great thing by writing the truth.
It is so easy for those with blinders on to call those who are conscious on inequity “obsessed with race”. I would call it obsessed with information or obsessed with equality. How anyone who reads anything can deny the obvious injustices we experience is beyond me.
Thanks leslie. It’s never been fully dealt with, but people have the nerve to be fatigued with the issue. If we’d actually fully deal with it, then maybe we could get past it; but certainly not until.
Natalie, many of them are able to ignore it because it doesn’t negatively affect them so they don’t have to car; and secondly, because conversely they benefit from the social status quo, so they’re not interested in seeing it change.
Anyone who claims to have an interest in human rights can’t afford to have blinders on even if it doesn’t affect their community.
We should push for there to be laws put into place that punish race offenders severely.
The same punishments should triple when they are “representatives’ of the system holding positions in law and government.
This needs to be fought for relentlessly I think, but I’ve been called naive…
If race offenders know they could receive overwhelming punishment for their actions, we would surely see a decline because race offenders are cowardly by nature.
We have to organize relentlessly if we want anything to happen. Everyone has to organize in their local communities. National figures and organizations can give oversite and tie us all together, but it’s not possible for them to do all the organizing locally that we have to have to have a national movement.
People can’t just talk about being outraged. Talk does nothing. Until people are willing to take the initiative individually, nothing will happen but a further roll back to Jim Crow.
Organization is key, indeed. It would seem the incidents that have been mounting are providing the reality behind the need for unrelenting solidarity with agreed upon direction. I’m far from considering it a lost cause. The vibes in the air do not feel like fear in the black community. Organization is definitely a necessary component, always has been. In this day and age it is easier to accomplish with the tools at the masses disposal.
Amen! It is unbeliveably ridiculous that in this day and age we still have to see this stuff over and over and over again. And people of different races WONDER why we get so excited over seemingly small victories. It’s because for every victory, it seems as if we have to put in THREE TIMES the effort and the brain power and the will to triumph! It has taken me a while, but I finally have a fuller appreciation of our struggle.