This writer prepared to spend Sunday at home reading a book titled The Great Hunger Ireland 1845-1849 by Cecil Woodham-Smith. However freedom fighters involved in Moral Monday CT and #BlackLivesMatter invited me to attend a meeting with whites who wanted to learn about what the black struggle is all about. These white people recently went out and held up #BlackLivesMatter signs in their suburban bailiwick ad were surprised at the amount of negativity received from passing motorist. So we sat in the room and started to talk with whites and discovered something familiar in this conversation and past dialogue with white folk... "their existential angst." Black people tried in this latest meeting to 'school' white folk that some of what they voiced as opinion and conversation was offensive in the context of this black struggle. A few whites became highly agitated and said so, some threatened to leave the meeting, voices were raised. And therein -at least for me et al.- lies the problem. For some reason whites continue to talk about wanting to be informed, work as allies, but these same whites come with mental baggage or notions of other worldviews [ All Lives Matter, Police Lives Matter ] and then get pissed off when told "hey your worldviews and speech are barriers to black liberation." Is it time for black freedom fighters to end this relationship with whites?
In Saint Louis, Missouri one prominent religious voice in the struggle for black liberation said this " I am so damn tired of listening to white peoples feelings." In several conversations with whites over the past year since Moral Monday CT was started by Bishop John Selders and wife Pamela Selders, white existential angst has been put forth as if it were The Holy Grail. Whites have questioned MMCT strategies, tactics, and indirectly the black leadership of Bishop Selders and Pam. And as granddaddy would say "here we be, once mo' and again with dis foolishness" i.e. white feelings about black agendas. It takes time, energy, the patience of Job and thick skin to listen to whites emotional catharsis about "their feelings" while trying to explain how blacks feel. The striking thing about all conversations with whites is how they keep trying to dilute the very essence of this freedom fighter struggle, by injecting in to the conversation ideations like All Lives Matter or Police Lives Matter. Not one of the whites attending the meeting yesterday could give working definitions of racism or discuss the origins of Moral Monday or #BlackLivesMatter. Yet whites tried to tell blacks in that room about feeling uncomfortable about some tactics of the movement ; hold on white folks, didn't you come to Bishop John Selders and Pamela asking to be guided from your own version of Plato's Myth of the Cave, where you were looking at forms and shadows that you perceived were real ? And on that journey out of the darkness of your mental cave toward the light... representing truth, did not many of the white folk hesitate ? In Plato's Myth of The Cave some people viewed the light and went back to the forms illuminated on the wall, that light was bright and revealing, it was more comfortable to embrace the lie [forms on the wall ]. It is apparent that after several years of talking with white folk about the freedom fighter movement black dialogue is not resonating inside of white consciousness.
At this juncture it is necessary to make hard decisions about working with white activists. We as black people are living in perilous times inside of America, police killings of blacks, and all the social barriers erected to hinder blacks make our existence a living nightmare. There is no time to indulge whites in banter about "their feelings" when the very existence of blacks is at stake. Hovering over the heads of black people like "The Sword of Damocles" is endemic American racism which manifest itself in forms more hideous than the face of the Gorgon Medusa. And while we as black people struggle with the horror of this hideousness of racism white people come to us and want to spew forth "their uncomfortableness or feelings" about black organizations.
The meeting Sunday finally ended with whites feeling threatened and blacks unable to move a white one dimensional worldview into a better understanding of what it means to live black.
It is time for black leadership to make that hard decision and publicly break from white folk as it relates to being involved in this movement. White people have given us no choice and no room to maneuver regarding this subject. To be sure there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth when we sever the relationship with white activists. They will claim to have been cast out into the Stygian Darkness. However whites will have to endure the pain.
Memo to white people: blacks folks have endured pain for 400 plus years in America.
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