A history lesson in two words. One man's brave act still echoes in an ambivalent age.
BY KELVIN SIMS
Thar he.
Those were powerful words, spoken by Mose Wright, the grandfather of
lynching victim Emmett Till. Risking his life in sweltering Mississippi
circa 1955, Wright fingered the two white men who had kidnapped and
brutalized a handsome prince.
Justice was denied then. But justice was on notice. A people had been
stirred.
Thar he.
Excuse the black dialect. I am not ashamed of it.
We had long known the enemy. Now came the time to lift that finger, raise
that voice, stay in that seat, march those feet. Let them know that we would
not allow the status quo.
Thar he.
I love and I hate Black History Month. Love to see a new generation learn of
lights in the darkness: Harriet Tubman's brave moonlit treks, guiding slaves
to freedom; Paul Robeson's courageous howls in the shadow of hypocrisy;
Martin Luther King's eloquent reading of a moral compass in hatred's pitch
black.
Thar he.
But Black History Month reveals stunted growth, too -- the dream delayed.
Communities over-populated with liquor stores. Murals hailing Allen Iverson
and Tupac by artists who haven't heard of Cornel West or Richard Parsons. A
beat so indifferent to violence that murder is rapped about. Record labels
thriving on their association with nihilistic materialism.
Artists may protest that their music is an escape but their words also
scream out for an inkling of responsibility. Even BET -- yes, BET, in all
its less-news-and-add-more-rump-shaking glory -- deserve Big Mama's knock
upside the head.
Thar he.
Bling-bling is the thing: pants sagging, subwoofers blasting, little girls
being treated as playthings and distractions.
A young black male is 15 times more likely to die by gunshot than his white
counterpart. And guess who's pulling the trigger? A problem so big the LAPD
calls it "the Monster." It's a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. But ignoring
the Monster hasn't worked. Big Mama is rolling in her grave; she bowed her
head, held her tongue and gave up the sidewalk for this?
Thar he.
A cult leader from East Georgia protests that he's persecuted for his
beliefs -- and his race. And why not: Putnam County, home turf for Uncle
Remus and the tar baby, is no haven of racial justice, is it? Hundreds flock
to his defense. But it turns out that the leader, when not looking so fine
in Mother Africa's garb, was involving innocents as young as 5 in
unspeakable acts. He led his flock to carnal slaughter. Now, even racists
whip out their warped sense of fairness to self-righteously conclude: We
told you so.
Thar he.
Is Black History Month passe? When an MIT study shows that ethnic-sounding
names on equally qualified resumes get half as many replies as do "American"
names, you make the call. Call him Mookie, Boo or Ray-Ray at home but don't
sanction the 'hood on the birth certificate. Otherwise, little LeBron will
grow up one day to call on Freedom Insurance, and Buffy, their newest
employee, will tell him, oops, your resume never was received.
Dubya, not the brightest star in the galaxy, got into Yale by connections
and legacy, not merit. Now, he appeals to his right-wing base by lashing out
at affirmative action. He riles white males with code words. But as Chris
Rock famously said: "If they're losing, then who's winning? It certainly
ain't us."
Thar he.
I hate Black History Month. It's really everyone's history, just the part
left out of the old textbooks. It forces us to dredge up that "R" word, the
800-pound elephant we'd rather ignore. It offends us. This is 2003. Race is
sooo last century.
But race won't stay neatly in history's trunk. A hundred years ago, W.E.B.
DuBois said the problem of the color line would be the problem of the 20th
century. He was right. Only, the color line has crossed into the new
millennium now.
Thar he.
Welfare queens. OJ. Affirmative action. Special treatment.
This flag is about heritage, not hate.
That Johnnie Cochran has some nerve, suing the NFL over minority coaches.
Thar he.
How different is it when black preachers, wrapped in homophobia, won't
discuss that disease even as it ravages our communities? Pssst, Reverend.
It's not just their disease anymore.
Thar he.
The last generation knew, with moral certainty. We're not so sure.
I want to play the Brand New Heavies' "Dream On, Dreamer." But why does
Marvin Gaye's "Make Me Wanna Holler" come out of the speakers? Is something
stuck?
Thar ... us?
Kelvin Sims is a freelance writer living in Decatur. He can be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
02.19.03
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In Uganda, 40 years after "independence", we, Ugandans, are at each other's throats, we torture, maim & persecute fellow citizens with reckless abandon. We somehow justify keeping thousands in concentration camps, euphemistically calld "protective villages". Our dependence on foreign charity is now many times than when we were a colony. Everywhere you look, there is biting poverty and decay, not because we are lazy or do not know what to do, but because the 'elite' gunmen who captured power not only mismanage the economy, but have their hands in the till too as a macabre final act of their betrayal of our naive trust.
As if this were not enough, it is repeated 40 times in Africa, in country after country, all of them "independent".
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